[R] Inefficiency of SAS Programming

[Millo Giovanni]

Dear Ajay,

just to deny the implicit statement 'corporate user'='moron' surfacing
here and there in this interesting thread :^). This might be a
statistical regularity but should by no means be considered a theorem,
as there are counter-examples available. You can find people willing to
learn both languages, appreciate the difference between them and use
each where it is particularly strong even in corporations and burosaurs
of any kind.

IMVHO, acceptance of R in the corporate world has little to do with
syntax and much with legacies, (discharge of-) responsibilities and the
distance between the decision maker/buyer and those who are actually
working with the SW. Else, assuming that 'corporate users' are not at a
significant cerebral disadvantage (which I like to), the penetration of
R in education, small and large companies should be the same, which I'm
afraid is not.

So I believe it boils down to industrial organization and the open
source vs. commercial development model, rather than to some kind of
(more or less appropriate) function rebranding. It is the *difference*
in syntax w.r.t. SAS that prompted the shift to R, in my case at least.
It was its ease and 'cleanliness' of installation (no registry entries,
no access to forbidden directories required) which allowed me to
experiment with it without having to mess with the IT Dept. (which would
probably have put an end to my quest). It was its open source nature
that allowed me to install it anywhere I liked to.

My 2 Euro-Cents
Giovanni

Disclaimer: just thinking of the Proc Step gives me shivers; yet I
recognize SAS is fast and powerful. I could understand somebody wanting
to execute SAS through R syntax, but the opposite is beyond my grasp. 



------------------------------

Message: 72
Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 08:44:51 +1300
From: Rolf Turner <r.turner at auckland.ac.nz>
Subject: Re: [R] Inefficiency of SAS Programming
To: Ajay ohri <ohri2007 at gmail.com>
Cc: "r-help-bounces at r-project.org" <r-help-bounces at r-project.org>,
	"Gerard M. Keogh" <GMKeogh at justice.ie>, list
	<r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch>, R,	Greg Snow <Greg.Snow at imail.org>
Message-ID: <8993CBA0-46A3-41DE-ABBB-29DB205FB713 at auckland.ac.nz>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"; delsp=yes; format=flowed


On 3/03/2009, at 5:58 PM, Ajay ohri wrote:

> for an " inefficient " language , it sure has dominated the predictive

> analytics world for 3 plus decades. I referred once to intellectual 
> jealousy between newton and liebnitz.
>
> i am going ahead and creating the R package called "Anne".
>
> It basically is meant only for SAS users who want to learn R , without

> upsetting the schedule of the corporate users.
>
> Simply put , it is a wrapper on SAS language using the function
> command...ie
> procunivariate function in "Anne" package would call the summary  
> function
> and so on...

Reminds me of fortune(38).

	cheers,

		Rolf Turner

######################################################################
Attention:\ This e-mail message is privileged and confid...{{dropped:9}}

Ai sensi del D.Lgs. 196/2003 si precisa che le informazi...{{dropped:13}}