[R] The R-help community list was started on this day 20 years ago

[Spencer Graves]

On 2017-04-02 8:42 AM, peter dalgaard wrote:
>> On 02 Apr 2017, at 14:53 , Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at effectivedefense.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 2017-04-02 4:10 AM, peter dalgaard wrote:
>>> Not fooling, no.
>>>
>>> However, r-help/r-announce/r-devel was a restructuring of the r-testers list. This goes back to March 20, 1996. The first archived post of r-testers is
>>>
>>> 	• just a test (the 'archiving' does not yet work) -->> Nr. 2 Martin Maechler
>>>
>>> so the actual start may have been a few days before.
>>
>>       So R was 11 when we celebrated its tenth birthday in Ames, Iowa, August 8-10, 2007?
> No, but the R Core Team was formed in August 1997.
>
> The birthdate of R itself is not well-defined. It could be June 1995 (GPL release), August 1993 (Announcement on S-news), or some night at the Black Crow Cafe in Auckland in the early 90's.


       The Wikipedia article on "S (programming language)" said it first 
appeared in 1976 for the GCOS operating system.  "In late 1979, S was 
ported from GCOS to UNIX, which would become the new primary platform."  
I remember using S or S-PLUS in the late 1980s, when it was only 
available for UNIX.  In the early 1990s, I got S-PLUS for Windows.  I'm 
pretty sure S-PLUS was NOT available for Macs in the late 1990s.


        Spencer Graves
>
> -pd
>
>>
>>       Best Wishes,
>>       Spencer Graves
>>> ...
>>>
>>> Incidentally, looking at the last posts of r-testers, it seems that CRAN turned 20 last week:
>>>
>>> Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1997 16:20:35 +0100
>>> Message-Id: <199703261520.QAA08097 at aragorn.ci.tuwien.ac.at>
>>> From: Kurt Hornik <Kurt.Hornik at ci.tuwien.ac.at>
>>> To: r-testers at stat.math.ethz.ch
>>>
>>> Subject: R-alpha: ANNOUNCE:  CRAN
>>>
>>> This is a first (alpha) announcement for the
>>>
>>> 		Comprehensive R Archive Network
>>> 			    (CRAN)
>>>
>>> project.
>>> ...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -pd
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> On 02 Apr 2017, at 08:17 , John <jwd at surewest.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, 1 Apr 2017 11:19:07 -0700
>>>> Henrik Bengtsson <henrik.bengtsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Today, it is been 20 years since Martin Mächler started the R-help
>>>>> community list (https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/). The first
>>>>> post was written by Ross Ihaka on 1997-04-01:
>>>>>
>>>>> Subject: R-alpha: R-testers: pmin heisenbug
>>>>> From: Ross Ihaka <ihaka at stat.auckland.ac.nz>
>>>>> When: Tue Apr 1 10:35:48 CEST 1997
>>>>> Archive: https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/1997-April/001488.html
>>>>>
>>>>> This is a post about R's memory model. We're talking R v0.50 beta. I
>>>>> think that the paragraph at the end provides a nice anecdote on the
>>>>> importance not to be overwhelmed by problems ahead:
>>>>>
>>>>>    "(The consumption of one cell per string is perhaps the major
>>>>> memory problem in R - we didn't design it with large problems in mind.
>>>>> It is probably fixable, but it will mean a lot of work)."
>>>>>
>>>>> We all know the story; an endless number of hours has been put in by
>>>>> many contributors throughout the years, making The R Project and its
>>>>> community the great experience it is today.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thank you!
>>>>>
>>>>> Henrik
>>>>>
>>>> No fooling?
>>>>
>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>>>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>>>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.