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That's really interesting to hear. I am an engineer rather than a statistician so my usage is probably different (Mostly analyzing and modeling process data).

That's really interesting to hear. I am an engineer rather than a statistician so my usage is probably different (Mostly analyzing and modeling process data). SAS is so entrenched in my organisation and there is such a long history of legacy SAS code that I feel like at this point it is probably impossible to migrate out of it. How did you end up adopting it was it an organisation wide thing? I was able to get my work to send me on R course last year (Based around Microsoft R-open product). I've found it pretty difficult to get other people here to switch the barrier is just a bit higher (functional language which people aren't all that comfortable writing etc) and lacks all the legacy code.

safgasCVS 8y ago
At our company adoption of open source tools happened bottom-up despite us having licenses for SAS, SPSS, Emblem etc etc. you name it we have it. But even having easy access to these tools people here still found downloading R/Python was easier still than logging a call with IT and having to manager approval to install software. Oh and on the legacy code - no it never goes away. The handful of SAS programmers around 20 years from now will be able to charge fortunes to maintain those legacy systems.
- hdkrgr 8y ago
  Similar experience at my organisation, it definitely happened bottom-up. I hear that before I started, there was a locked room with a PC that had "that open source R" on it and people had to go to management and have some good reason if they wanted the key. Few years later, everone is using R and python for everything they do ad-hoc; so it made sense to also let them use the same languages for bigger projects. When we had to make some changes to legacy software for GDPR compliance, we took the opportunity and completely migrated some big legacy projects from SAS to R. We've just been able to get rid of licenses for some particularly costly SAS modules because of this.

safgasCVS 8y ago

At our company adoption of open source tools happened bottom-up despite us having licenses for SAS, SPSS, Emblem etc etc. you name it we have it. But even having easy access to these tools people here still found downloading R/Python was easier still than logging a call with IT and having to manager approval to install software. Oh and on the legacy code - no it never goes away. The handful of SAS programmers around 20 years from now will be able to charge fortunes to maintain those legacy systems.

hdkrgr 8y ago
Similar experience at my organisation, it definitely happened bottom-up. I hear that before I started, there was a locked room with a PC that had "that open source R" on it and people had to go to management and have some good reason if they wanted the key. Few years later, everone is using R and python for everything they do ad-hoc; so it made sense to also let them use the same languages for bigger projects. When we had to make some changes to legacy software for GDPR compliance, we took the opportunity and completely migrated some big legacy projects from SAS to R. We've just been able to get rid of licenses for some particularly costly SAS modules because of this.