[R-sig-finance] R vs. S-PLUS

[Patrick Burns]

Gary Cable wrote:

>
>I don't want to detract from the success of the R language, but if I were
>going to build solutions in a highly regulated industry that expects
>documentation, official support and standardization -- I would be inclined
>toward a commercial solution rather than a freeware solution. This decision
>comes from twenty years of experience of application development. 
>  
>

The usual argument for preferring commercial software is that the commercial
software will be better written, tested, documented and supported.  The 
expectation
is that the free software will have many bugs, and the commercial 
software will
have few bugs.

Perhaps my experience is unusual, but in using S-PLUS for Windows for 4 
months
I found 2 serious bugs, 2 very annoying bugs and a few minor bugs.  In 
2.5 years
of intense use of R I have found 4 or 5 minor bugs (almost all of which 
have now
been fixed).

I don't think playing the "commercial" card for S-PLUS is a good 
strategy until
the point that it has at least as good of quality control as R.

Patrick Burns

Burns Statistics
patrick at burns-stat.com
+44 (0)20 8525 0696
http://www.burns-stat.com
(home of S Poetry and "A Guide for the Unwilling S User")

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