[R] R annoyances

[Berton Gunter]

Vadim et.al:

I do not care to comment one way or the other about R's "irregularities.'
But I am puzzled by your statement that a "good C++ programmer is struggling
with R." Why should they not struggle?! R is primarily a language for data
analysis, statistics, and graphics. I do not understand why someone who is a
C++ programmer would be expected to have the knowledge and experience to be
a "data miner" and would not therefore struggle to deal with the statistical
and data analysis issues that are deliberately at the heart of many of R's
programming conventions.

Is there something here that I am missing, or is this yet another example of
Frank Harrell's "instant brain surgeon" commentary?

-- Bert Gunter
Genentech Non-Clinical Statistics
South San Francisco, CA
 
"The business of the statistician is to catalyze the scientific learning
process."  - George E. P. Box
 
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Vadim 
> Ogranovich
> Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2005 10:40 AM
> To: Thomas Lumley; Rod Montgomery
> Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: RE: [R] R annoyances
> 
> I think the flaw in this reasoning is that programmers are not
> considered users. IMO, making a better language is beneficial 
> for users.
> 
> I am now watching how a new colleague of mine, a very good C++
> programmer turning into a data miner, is struggling w/ many
> "irregularities" of R.
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
> > [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Thomas Lumley
> > Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2005 9:39 AM
> > To: Rod Montgomery
> > Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> > Subject: Re: [R] R annoyances
> > 
> > On Thu, 19 May 2005, Rod Montgomery wrote:
> > > Thomas Lumley wrote:
> > >> This one is actually a FAQ,
> > >>         mtx[,1,drop=FALSE]
> > >> 
> > >>     -thomas
> > >> 
> > > I wonder whether there is, or should be, a way to set FALSE 
> > as the default?
> > >
> > 
> > There shouldn't be (apart from editing the code), because you 
> > really don't want something this basic to be unpredictable.
> > 
> > There have been discussions at several times about whether 
> > drop=FALSE or drop=TRUE should be the default. The decision 
> > has always been that programmers can cope either way, but 
> > that users probably don't expect mtx[,1] to be a vector, and 
> > that they definitely don't expect mtx[1,1] to be a matrix.
> > 
> >  	-thomas
> > 
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