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But R... is a language for statistics. It's not a language for anything else. RStudio is pretty good now, I have never had issues with it. But you could, you kn

by zwaps 8y ago

But R... is a language for statistics. It's not a language for anything else. RStudio is pretty good now, I have never had issues with it. But you could, you know, use your extensive programming skills to use something else? It's not that packages are useful. It's frankly that they are necessary. R is a complete statistical package that allows you do to your job or do research. It's the only statistical package that does this for free. Given that there are no alternatives, it's hard to even see your point here. You wanna switch languages because you don't like R? Great, but now you can not do your job. What's the point? In research, where R is used, you have to run a lot of models per project in a short amount of time. You could theoretically go back to the paper. Often, understanding the model on paper is quite different from understanding the implementation. So after some study, you dig up the code (in R), and programm the model into another language (where I think Python will be the only option bc. of NumPy). And then you have spent a couple of days doing basically nothing. Now you have wasted everyone's time, and you probably have bugs or don't implement a minor details correctly so that your results differ from R, so that you are giving wrong results or at least invite issues with replication... Look, I don't like using R either. For my research, I use prefer to use Matlab as I anyway do have to program most of the things myself. But when it comes to running quick stats analysis, I sure as hell fire up R, just like everyone else. I'd be a total idiot if I go and write up every standard and non-standard method in my language of choice. Also, I'd be fired. No, R is not for you, since you care about 64bit numbers and typecasting elegance and like to write everything yourself. But R is really popular with many other people, people who can fire it up, for free, do some rather advanced stats analyses without spending weeks of prep, and get their results out fast and in a reliable, replicatable manner.

zaarn 8y ago
My point is that R is horrible, even when used for statistics but it's the only solution in statistics so people use it (probably with some self-reinforcing stockholm syndrome)
- zwaps 8y ago
  Do you have any actual critiques that may apply to a day-to-day workflow of someone doing statistics? Assume packages and RStudio work as advertised and he/she does not need 64bits.
  - adwn 8y ago
    > Assume packages and RStudio work as advertised and he/she does not need 64bits. I.e., "Disregarding the weak points, what weak points are there?"
    - bllguo 8y ago
      was this comment supposed to contribute anything? We've already went over those. Most reasonable people would probably not prefer to sit here and reiterate the same points multiple times. edit: And as was explained - they hardly have an effect on most R workflows. I write R. I know people who write R (and Python) for production models. We could care less about 64 bit, and I for one think RStudio is rock-solid and one of the best IDEs I've ever used. And the tens of comments in this very thread about the package system show that no, it is not a foregone conclusion that packages are poorly handled.
a008t 8y ago
You can call R functions from Python. You can then write a Python wrapper around R packages that you need.

by zwaps 8y ago

zaarn 8y ago

My point is that R is horrible, even when used for statistics but it's the only solution in statistics so people use it (probably with some self-reinforcing stockholm syndrome)

zwaps 8y ago
Do you have any actual critiques that may apply to a day-to-day workflow of someone doing statistics? Assume packages and RStudio work as advertised and he/she does not need 64bits.
- adwn 8y ago
  > Assume packages and RStudio work as advertised and he/she does not need 64bits. I.e., "Disregarding the weak points, what weak points are there?"
  - bllguo 8y ago
    was this comment supposed to contribute anything? We've already went over those. Most reasonable people would probably not prefer to sit here and reiterate the same points multiple times. edit: And as was explained - they hardly have an effect on most R workflows. I write R. I know people who write R (and Python) for production models. We could care less about 64 bit, and I for one think RStudio is rock-solid and one of the best IDEs I've ever used. And the tens of comments in this very thread about the package system show that no, it is not a foregone conclusion that packages are poorly handled.

a008t 8y ago

You can call R functions from Python. You can then write a Python wrapper around R packages that you need.