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

[Jim Lemon]

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)?
>
Hi johannes,
Think of it as a classic work of cinematic art.

The Good

It's familiar. If you've programmed in C (or FORTRAN, APL,...) the 
syntax will be sufficiently familiar that the noob can begin doing 
useful things right away. Building functions is a natural step from 
using the numerous built in functions. It's easy to get started with the 
bits that are cool and fun, like graphics. I recall programming a 
psychological test in Tcl-Tk (which I like a great deal) and finding 
that even simple graphics were a lot more difficult than they are in R.

The Bad

It's not always what you expect. It is so easy to get started that most 
people will get tripped up by some neat feature of the underlying object 
oriented programming model. For a while, the more you learn, the more 
you have to learn.

The Ugly

You are almost encouraged to write sloppy spaghetti code, as most common 
problems will yield to monkey-search programming in R. Just stick things 
together until the answer comes out. That's the price you pay for The Good.

Jim