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

[cberry at tajo.ucsd.edu]

johannes rara <johannesraja at gmail.com> writes:

> 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.

For that audience this might be a useful reference:

     http://www.springerlink.com/content/284141778194p522/


     Evaluating the Design of the R Language
     (Objects and Functions for Data Analysis)

     Floreal Morandat, Brandon Hill, Leo Osvald and Jan Vitek

>From the abstract:

"This rather unlikely linguistic cocktail would probably never have
been prepared by computer scientists, yet the language has become
surprisingly popular."

and 

"Using a combination of static and dynamic program analysis we assess
the success of different language features."

HTH,

Chuck

>
> 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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>

-- 
Charles C. Berry                            Dept of Family/Preventive Medicine
cberry at ucsd edu			    UC San Diego
http://famprevmed.ucsd.edu/faculty/cberry/  La Jolla, San Diego 92093-0901