The Devil Made Them Do It

If you haven't already, you need to get a copy of the R Inferno, and you need to read the latest presentation from Pat Burns.

If for no other reason than these two slides:

1984

This was the year that a mediocre actor who already had Alzheimer's would be re-elected to preside over a big pile of nuclear weapons. A very Strangelovian event.


And, not the least reason, he states, right there on page 25, in similar words to mine: "The second driver of problems with R is that it is both a programming language and an interactive language." The way I phrase it: R is both command language and programming language, but both amount to the same thing. Ah, camaraderie.

And, on page 34, he sets any arrhythmic heart ("THERE'S so much STUFF!!!") back to normal: "If you think you can learn all of R, you are wrong. For the foreseeable future you will not even be able to keep up with the new additions."

And, one last quote: "It should, and hopefully will, replace lots of the data analysis that is currently done in spreadsheets." Boy howdy!