7 ms·

Oooof, SAS (in the author's dad anecdote). If they get hooked young, it's expensive hell to get them to quit. I'm not sure how that colors by analogy my view of

by _dwt 5y ago

Oooof, SAS (in the author's dad anecdote). If they get hooked young, it's expensive hell to get them to quit. I'm not sure how that colors by analogy my view of the main point of the article, but it's tempting to reach for: yes, if you get addicted to expensive (and/or proprietary) complexity, you sometimes lose sight of how to build simple solutions to simple problems. I'm not sure that's an argument in favor of the intellectual superiority of those who build the complexity...

siver_john 5y ago
It reminded me of my days in college where professors encouraged us to use Matlab. A variety of reasons made me not like it but one of them for sure was the realization that the moment I left college Matlab would no longer be "free" to me. Yes, I know Octave exists, no it can't do everything Matlab can do and a lot of the programs I saw used needed Matlab specific things.
madrox 5y ago
I'm a huge SAS fan, but after college it fell out of my toolkit for the same reason as the author: license fees. It's a shame, because I found SAS far and away to be the best tool for data cleaning and querying. Plus, it's got great readability...especially over R, though that may be a contentious opinion. I'm honestly surprised and disappointed to see how little SAS has adapted to competition. I'm sure they'll milk their existing customers for another generation, but it'll kill their business on a long enough timeline.
- garmaine 5y ago
  Likewise I absolutely love Mathematica, and have a personal license I make good use of. I would never, ever use it in a business or consulting context though as the license fees are just way too high.
- wlesieutre 5y ago
  I had the misfortune of needing to install SAS on my computer (fiancee has a license through grad school) and the whole install process is built around a complicated licensing scheme that ties any of a hundred optional components together into a massive assembly depending on exactly how much money they were able to squeeze out of you. There was a problem with our license file which meant we got through 5-10 screens of installer and then hit "The SID file you selected is not intended for the order you are deploying because the Tech Support Site Number values do not match. Select a SID file with a matching tech support site number." And then two weeks later we were finally able to get a correct license file from the IT department. I can't say how much of that was IT's fault or if it really took two weeks to get the fixed license from SAS, but either way I'd be happier to never touch it again.
  - madrox 5y ago
    Yeah, you've summed up the pains of SAS. The query language itself is quite lovely.
    - wlesieutre 5y ago
      The "which components do you want to install" page feels like the end result of 45 years of "one customer wants this feature, let's add it to the product and maybe somebody else will buy it too!" I'm sure they're all useful to someone (or they were at some point), but boy am I glad to not be in charge of managing that license.
      - wlesieutre 5y ago
        In case anyone wanders into this old thread, guess what I'm doing tonight! If you guessed "unfucking a SAS license but the renewal utility won't work because it can't get a lock on some file" you win the satisfaction of knowing you were right.
- spicybright 5y ago
  I've never used it, so I can't speak on it's complexity, but are there any comparable open source alternatives? Like an OpenOffice style project?
  - madrox 5y ago
    If there is, I don't know of it. A little googling suggests Gnu Dap, but I haven't tried it. SAS is a query language, so it has a lot in common with SQL, though it's much more powerful.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      > SAS is a query language, so it has a lot in common with SQL, though it's much more powerful. Well, as I recall it, it's more of a database management / software development package with an integrated data manipulation language (the original one, among the at least three "languages" it contains) to make new datasets based on existing ones. Yes, as an imperative Turing-complete language that's much more powerful than SQL, but it carries with it a huge overhead in the form of the whole rest of the system. Not to mention the lock-in.
  - icelancer 5y ago
    R studio is the typical alternative, along with GNU Octave. They're not super comparable; SAS is an Oracle-type product as others have pointed out in this thread

by _dwt 5y ago

siver_john 5y ago

It reminded me of my days in college where professors encouraged us to use Matlab. A variety of reasons made me not like it but one of them for sure was the realization that the moment I left college Matlab would no longer be "free" to me. Yes, I know Octave exists, no it can't do everything Matlab can do and a lot of the programs I saw used needed Matlab specific things.

madrox 5y ago

I'm a huge SAS fan, but after college it fell out of my toolkit for the same reason as the author: license fees. It's a shame, because I found SAS far and away to be the best tool for data cleaning and querying. Plus, it's got great readability...especially over R, though that may be a contentious opinion. I'm honestly surprised and disappointed to see how little SAS has adapted to competition. I'm sure they'll milk their existing customers for another generation, but it'll kill their business on a long enough timeline.

garmaine 5y ago
Likewise I absolutely love Mathematica, and have a personal license I make good use of. I would never, ever use it in a business or consulting context though as the license fees are just way too high.
wlesieutre 5y ago
I had the misfortune of needing to install SAS on my computer (fiancee has a license through grad school) and the whole install process is built around a complicated licensing scheme that ties any of a hundred optional components together into a massive assembly depending on exactly how much money they were able to squeeze out of you. There was a problem with our license file which meant we got through 5-10 screens of installer and then hit "The SID file you selected is not intended for the order you are deploying because the Tech Support Site Number values do not match. Select a SID file with a matching tech support site number." And then two weeks later we were finally able to get a correct license file from the IT department. I can't say how much of that was IT's fault or if it really took two weeks to get the fixed license from SAS, but either way I'd be happier to never touch it again.
- madrox 5y ago
  Yeah, you've summed up the pains of SAS. The query language itself is quite lovely.
  - wlesieutre 5y ago
    The "which components do you want to install" page feels like the end result of 45 years of "one customer wants this feature, let's add it to the product and maybe somebody else will buy it too!" I'm sure they're all useful to someone (or they were at some point), but boy am I glad to not be in charge of managing that license.
    - wlesieutre 5y ago
      In case anyone wanders into this old thread, guess what I'm doing tonight! If you guessed "unfucking a SAS license but the renewal utility won't work because it can't get a lock on some file" you win the satisfaction of knowing you were right.
spicybright 5y ago
I've never used it, so I can't speak on it's complexity, but are there any comparable open source alternatives? Like an OpenOffice style project?
- madrox 5y ago
  If there is, I don't know of it. A little googling suggests Gnu Dap, but I haven't tried it. SAS is a query language, so it has a lot in common with SQL, though it's much more powerful.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    > SAS is a query language, so it has a lot in common with SQL, though it's much more powerful. Well, as I recall it, it's more of a database management / software development package with an integrated data manipulation language (the original one, among the at least three "languages" it contains) to make new datasets based on existing ones. Yes, as an imperative Turing-complete language that's much more powerful than SQL, but it carries with it a huge overhead in the form of the whole rest of the system. Not to mention the lock-in.
- icelancer 5y ago
  R studio is the typical alternative, along with GNU Octave. They're not super comparable; SAS is an Oracle-type product as others have pointed out in this thread