[Rd] How difficult is it to wrap a large C++ library with R?

[Bo Peng]

> There was a couple of posts about this recently:
> 
> https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2005-April/subject.html
> 

I am too new to this list to see these discussions. They are quite interesting!

Certainly I was not aware of the big differences between C++/Python
OOP and S3/S4 OOP. This explains why I skipped the OOP part of the red
S-Plus manual when I was learning S-Plus: I was not able to get the
ideas although I was an experienced C++ programmer. Regardless of the
question of 'which OOP is better', I certainly agree with Nathan's
opinion that R has lost many users/developers who only know C++/Python
OOP.

I think I would better continue to use Python to wrap my C++ code
(until Ali find a good way to automatically wrap C++ code, or SWIG
adds R support). It is simply much easier and more efficient.
Destructing my C++ classes into C pieces and reconstruct them in S4
way would be tedious, and the performance penalty will most possibly
be disastrous for this simulation environment.

Cheers,
Bo