[R] The Origins of R AND CALCULUS

[Mark Difford]

Peter Dalgaard wrote:

>> This of course does not mean that the current R should not acknowledge
>> its substantial S heritage, just that if you want to describe the early
>> history of R 
>> accurately, you do need to choose your words rather more carefully.

Point taken, Peter. But I wan't trying to give an accurate portrayal of the
origins of R. That was Mr. Vance's obligation. I was attempting to show how
easy it would be for someone who is a writer by profession to make
reasonable, and proper, reference to R's "substantial S heritage...," as you
yourself put it. And that, really, I feel, is the point.



Peter Dalgaard wrote:
> 
> Mark Difford wrote:
> 
>> 
>> It would have been very easy for Mr. Vance to have written:
>> 
>> John M. Chambers, a former Bell Labs researcher who is now a consulting
>> professor of statistics at Stanford University, was an early champion. At
>> Bell Labs, Mr. Chambers had helped develop S, THE PROTOTYPE OF R, which
>> was
>> meant to give researchers of all stripes an accessible data analysis
>> tool.
>> 
> 
> ...except that it would be wrong in about as many ways. (In fact, 
> referring to S (v.3) as "the prototype" was an internal R Core joke for 
> quite a while.) Two major points:
> 
> - S-PLUS was at the time a strong commercial product, not a prototype of 
>     anything, and calling it that would be disrespectful to quite a few 
> people working for and with StatSci/Insightful/TIBCO and their 
> international distributors, as well as the Bell Labs/Lucent Technologies 
> group. It couldn't touch the "dinosaurs" SAS and SPSS, but it did reach 
> a level of more than 100000 licenced users. It took several years for R 
> to get to a credibility level where it was even known outside some 
> narrow academic circles.
> 
> - S compatibility was not a primary goal of R. The original plan was for 
> a Scheme-like language with "syntactic sugar" making in "not unlike" S. 
> The potential for running existing S scripts with minimal modifications 
> drove R much closer to S than originally anticipated.  This of course 
> does not mean that the current R should not acknowledge its substantial 
> S heritage, just that if you want to describe the early history of R 
> accurately, you do need to choose your words rather more carefully.
> 
> -- 
>     O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Øster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B
>    c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K
>   (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph:  (+45) 35327918
> ~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk)              FAX: (+45) 35327907
> 
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