[R] Wikis etc.

[J Dougherty]

On Monday 09 January 2006 11:31, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> . . .
>
> I certainly was not disparaging books.  I said _in addition to_ books,
> not _insted of_.  The reason I pointed this out is that I think
> most people already read the books.  What many people don't
> do as far as can tell is read the code.  Obviously if you are just
> starting out you are going to be relying on the documentation,
> books, etc. but once you get past the intro stage you need to get
> into code.  One repeatedly sees questions on this list where just
> a minute or two spent with the code would have answered the
> question.
>
Gabor,  

The issue IS the INTRO stage though, in fact well beyond the intro stage.  
Reading the code is well and good for a programmer, but many are not and 
never will be coders, and this group is going to continue to expand.  Even an 
advanced statistician migrating from a proprietary system like SPSS to R is 
going to need documentation.  They would not even know where in the code to 
look!  Code is cool, but it really isn't expository.

John