[R] The R-help community list was started on this day 20 years ago

[peter dalgaard]

> On 02 Apr 2017, at 14:53 , Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at effectivedefense.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 2017-04-02 4:10 AM, peter dalgaard wrote:
>> Not fooling, no.
>> 
>> However, r-help/r-announce/r-devel was a restructuring of the r-testers list. This goes back to March 20, 1996. The first archived post of r-testers is
>> 
>> 	• just a test (the 'archiving' does not yet work) -->> Nr. 2 Martin Maechler
>> 
>> so the actual start may have been a few days before.
> 
> 
>      So R was 11 when we celebrated its tenth birthday in Ames, Iowa, August 8-10, 2007?

No, but the R Core Team was formed in August 1997. 

The birthdate of R itself is not well-defined. It could be June 1995 (GPL release), August 1993 (Announcement on S-news), or some night at the Black Crow Cafe in Auckland in the early 90's.

-pd

> 
> 
>      Best Wishes,
>      Spencer Graves
>> 
>> ...
>> 
>> Incidentally, looking at the last posts of r-testers, it seems that CRAN turned 20 last week:
>> 
>> Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1997 16:20:35 +0100
>> Message-Id: <199703261520.QAA08097 at aragorn.ci.tuwien.ac.at>
>> From: Kurt Hornik <Kurt.Hornik at ci.tuwien.ac.at>
>> To: r-testers at stat.math.ethz.ch
>> 
>> Subject: R-alpha: ANNOUNCE:  CRAN
>> 
>> This is a first (alpha) announcement for the
>> 
>> 		Comprehensive R Archive Network
>> 			    (CRAN)
>> 
>> project.
>> ...
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -pd
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On 02 Apr 2017, at 08:17 , John <jwd at surewest.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On Sat, 1 Apr 2017 11:19:07 -0700
>>> Henrik Bengtsson <henrik.bengtsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Today, it is been 20 years since Martin Mächler started the R-help
>>>> community list (https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/). The first
>>>> post was written by Ross Ihaka on 1997-04-01:
>>>> 
>>>> Subject: R-alpha: R-testers: pmin heisenbug
>>>> From: Ross Ihaka <ihaka at stat.auckland.ac.nz>
>>>> When: Tue Apr 1 10:35:48 CEST 1997
>>>> Archive: https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/1997-April/001488.html
>>>> 
>>>> This is a post about R's memory model. We're talking R v0.50 beta. I
>>>> think that the paragraph at the end provides a nice anecdote on the
>>>> importance not to be overwhelmed by problems ahead:
>>>> 
>>>>   "(The consumption of one cell per string is perhaps the major
>>>> memory problem in R - we didn't design it with large problems in mind.
>>>> It is probably fixable, but it will mean a lot of work)."
>>>> 
>>>> We all know the story; an endless number of hours has been put in by
>>>> many contributors throughout the years, making The R Project and its
>>>> community the great experience it is today.
>>>> 
>>>> Thank you!
>>>> 
>>>> Henrik
>>>> 
>>> No fooling?
>>> 
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
>>> 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.
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> 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.

-- 
Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Phone: (+45)38153501
Office: A 4.23
Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com