[R] two questions for R beginners

[Dieter Menne]

Patrick Burns wrote:
> 
> * What were your biggest misconceptions or
> stumbling blocks to getting up and running
> with R?
> 
> 
(This derives partly from teaching)

The fact that this xapply-stuff was not idempotent (worse: not always) and
that you need a monster like do.call() to straighten this out. Nowadays,
plyr comes close.

The concept of environment. With S it was worse, though.

That you cannot change values "passed by reference". I noted that the latter
is no problem for students who have not worked with c(++/#) before. That
there is only one return-result in functions.

"[" and the likes as an operator.

10 years ago, when I started, the message was: S4 is the future, S3 is
legacy. So I learned S4. Only to never use is in self-written code later.
Might be different for BioConductor people.

That sometimes you can use vectors not in data= (lattice), and sometimes not
(ggplot2). Still a VERY confusing inconsistency.

The "why-does-this-not-print" FAQ.

Why does par(oma..) not work with lattice?

Dieter


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