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SQL made relational programming possible, when computer were too slow to do declarative programming. The modern aproach would be something more highlevel/declar
by j-pb 5y ago
SQL made relational programming possible, when computer were too slow to do declarative programming.
The modern aproach would be something more highlevel/declarative like Datalog, but given the context SQL made a good tradeoff in terms of programmer control and declarativity.
R is ugly because it encourages users to use it wrong.
For loops are slow as a snail, but are what everybody uses and teaches, while the proper/fast way to wrangle data, with higher order functions like map, is hidden behind idiosyncratic names and obscure APIs.
Even the creator of R considered making it a language instead of the scheme library that it started iut as, as a mistake.
- Someone 5y agoI think something like QBE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Query_by_Example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Query_by_Example; about as old as SQL) is the way to let non-programmers write queries.
- marianoguerra 5y agoI'm working on that :) Instadeq: A Live Programming Environment for End User Data Analysis and Visualization Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTEkYqnGICE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTEkYqnGICE Slides: https://marianoguerra.github.io/presentations/2021-live/ https://marianoguerra.github.io/presentations/2021-live/
- Nekorosu 5y agoLooks a lot like declarative logical programming language in disguise (Datalog, Prolog).
- jhbadger 5y agoI was a huge fan of xlispstat in the 1990s (which I've archived on Github at (https://github.com/jhbadger/xlispstat https://github.com/jhbadger/xlispstat), but the simple fact is that the majority of the statistics community just didn't like Lisp-like languages, and not only xlispstat, but newer projects like Incanter (statistics for Clojure) have pretty much failed as well. R meets its need far better than a Scheme library that nobody would have used. It's yet another example of "worse is better".