[R] What makes R different from other programming languages?

[R. Michael Weylandt]

On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 5:57 PM, Greg Snow <538280 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think the big unique thing about R is that it is both an interactive
> environment and a programming language.  A new user can start it,
> enter some data, and compute same basic statics without ever
> "programming".  A more advanced user can write their own function to
> automate common procedures or implement an new method.  The journey
> from user to programmer is smoother that learning a macro language or
> API.
>
> Add to that the packages available (which could be programmed in other
> languages, but why?) and you have a very useful tool.

And note that the "rJava" package allows both way communications
between R and Java (I'm ~95% sure and that seems to be all
statisticians care about ;-) ) so your Java programmers can take
advantage of R's libraries too.

http://www.rforge.net/rJava/

Cheers,
Michael

>
> On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 1:22 PM, johannes rara <johannesraja at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Thanks, the audience is mainly Java developers who develop tailored
>> software for many domains. I think that they would like to have some
>> answers to these kind of questions:
>>
>> - why should I learn R?
>> - what are the specific use cases where one might think of using R?
>> - in which area R is good for?
>> - how R differ from other programming and scripting languages?
>> - etc.
>>
>> My intention is to convince them so that they will try R on their own,
>> and probably in some day start using R in their projects.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> -J
>>
>> 2012/8/20 R. Michael Weylandt <michael.weylandt at gmail.com>:
>>> As a language, there are some nifty things about function arguments:
>>> http://blog.moertel.com/articles/2006/01/20/wondrous-oddities-rs-function-call-semantics.
>>> Lexical scoping +  first class functions also come to mind.
>>>
>>> If we are thinking about libraries, graphics:
>>> http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/ and look into ggplot2
>>> (including the famous facebook world map) and statistical modelling
>>> (both base and in contributed packages)
>>>
>>> What are your developers interested in and we can be more specific?
>>>
>>> Michael
>>>
>>> On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 1:02 PM, johannes rara <johannesraja at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> My intention is to give a presentation about R programming language
>>>> for software developers. I would like to ask, what are the things that
>>>> make R different from other programming languages? What are the
>>>> specific cases where Java/C#/Python developer might say "Wow, that was
>>>> neat!"? What are the things that are easy in R, but very difficult in
>>>> other programming languages (like Java)?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> -J
>>>>
>>>> ______________________________________________
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>>>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>> 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.
>
>
>
> --
> Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
> 538280 at gmail.com