5 ms·

It’s sadly still quite popular in the research world

by legobmw99 5y ago

jazzyjackson 5y ago
What about it makes you sad?
- vore 5y ago
  Not the original poster, but the language has some really weird edges. For instance, check out this wild behavior: http://www.hep.by/gnu/r-patched/r-lang/R-lang_41.html http://www.hep.by/gnu/r-patched/r-lang/R-lang_41.html
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - asdff 5y ago
    This is because R borrows a lot of syntax from S. When R came out, statisticians were using S, so it was natural to make it like this. If they went another way, you'd get statisticians in mailing lists 20 years ago bemoaning how its so much not like familiar S, rather than regular old programmers 20 years later today who bemoan that R isn't like familiar python like what happens on HN whenever there is an R thread.
    - vore 5y ago
      I think the behavior is so wildly inconsistent that it's not really justifiable, regardless of being a statistician or not: https://github.com/tidyverse/design/issues/13#issuecomment-407453348 https://github.com/tidyverse/design/issues/13#issuecomment-4...
      - asdff 5y ago
        I mean compared to other languages these sorts of quirks might seem like big deals, but they rarely come up. You see that error, you copy paste and find a stack overflow thread explaining it, you know what to do next time and move on. R is certainly no C.
  - hugh-avherald 5y ago
    Idiosyncrasies are not something unique to R. One could express the same surprise at an empty list being considered false in some contexts.
  - kgwgk 5y ago
    As far as weird edges go, that one is really, really mild. It may even be considered a good idea! For people interested in weirder things, check The R Inferno (I think it's somewhat outdated by now, though): https://www.burns-stat.com/documents/books/the-r-inferno/ https://www.burns-stat.com/documents/books/the-r-inferno/
    - jsmith99 5y ago
      That book isn't so much about R weirdness. It's more about teaching data scientists to consider the implications of practices like copying a huge table in memory on every loop iteration.

It’s sadly still quite popular in the research world

jazzyjackson 5y ago

What about it makes you sad?

vore 5y ago
Not the original poster, but the language has some really weird edges. For instance, check out this wild behavior: http://www.hep.by/gnu/r-patched/r-lang/R-lang_41.html http://www.hep.by/gnu/r-patched/r-lang/R-lang_41.html
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- asdff 5y ago
  This is because R borrows a lot of syntax from S. When R came out, statisticians were using S, so it was natural to make it like this. If they went another way, you'd get statisticians in mailing lists 20 years ago bemoaning how its so much not like familiar S, rather than regular old programmers 20 years later today who bemoan that R isn't like familiar python like what happens on HN whenever there is an R thread.
  - vore 5y ago
    I think the behavior is so wildly inconsistent that it's not really justifiable, regardless of being a statistician or not: https://github.com/tidyverse/design/issues/13#issuecomment-407453348 https://github.com/tidyverse/design/issues/13#issuecomment-4...
    - asdff 5y ago
      I mean compared to other languages these sorts of quirks might seem like big deals, but they rarely come up. You see that error, you copy paste and find a stack overflow thread explaining it, you know what to do next time and move on. R is certainly no C.
- hugh-avherald 5y ago
  Idiosyncrasies are not something unique to R. One could express the same surprise at an empty list being considered false in some contexts.
- kgwgk 5y ago
  As far as weird edges go, that one is really, really mild. It may even be considered a good idea! For people interested in weirder things, check The R Inferno (I think it's somewhat outdated by now, though): https://www.burns-stat.com/documents/books/the-r-inferno/ https://www.burns-stat.com/documents/books/the-r-inferno/
  - jsmith99 5y ago
    That book isn't so much about R weirdness. It's more about teaching data scientists to consider the implications of practices like copying a huge table in memory on every loop iteration.