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

[peter dalgaard]

> On 02 Apr 2017, at 19:15 , Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at effectivedefense.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 2017-04-02 8:42 AM, peter dalgaard wrote:
>>> 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.
> 
> 
>      The Wikipedia article on "S (programming language)" said it first appeared in 1976 for the GCOS operating system.  "In late 1979, S was ported from GCOS to UNIX, which would become the new primary platform."  I remember using S or S-PLUS in the late 1980s, when it was only available for UNIX.  In the early 1990s, I got S-PLUS for Windows.  I'm pretty sure S-PLUS was NOT available for Macs in the late 1990s.

Did anyone say that it was?? Anyways, as I recall it, part of the genesis of R was exactly that the Auckland computer labs were Mac-based and R&R wanted a mini-S to run on them.

-pd

> 
> 
>       Spencer Graves
>> 
>> -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