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R might be a perfectly fine language, but the culture and ecosystem around R seem to produce a lot of untested, difficult to read code. Globals everywhere, medi
by CalRobert 5y ago
R might be a perfectly fine language, but the culture and ecosystem around R seem to produce a lot of untested, difficult to read code. Globals everywhere, mediocre requirements resolution, and a lack of forced namespacing come to mind. Maybe it's a result of being used by people who are not primarily programmers.
- rout39574 5y agoThat's my diagnosis. I've tried on and off since at least 2006 to affect the course of that culture, to make managing R packages more tractable. I'd say the R dev community was then actively hostile to a culture change to support any model other than individual contributors working at their desktop.
- disgruntledphd2 5y agoMost R is written by people who are not (and mostly don't want to be) professional programmers. This is both a strength (industrial strength discipline specific tools) and a weakness (oh dear lord the code, my eyeeeeees). It's also important to note that much of the original core of R is based on S, which was developed around the same time as C, so some baggage would be expected.