On Saturday, 9 January 2016 at 21:40:02 UTC, jmh530 wrote:
On Saturday, 9 January 2016 at 19:39:44 UTC, Jakob Jenkov wrote:
The communication is the easy part. The time consuming part
is converting R objects to D objects and vice versa. I've had
to learn the internals of R at the same time that I've
learned D. I've been working on it in my spare time for more
than two years.
Would it have been possible to make a D API for data analysis
instead? Or is that too big a job?
You could program anything in D that would run in R and it
would probably be faster (unless the R code is using some
optimized C/C++ code already). The issue is that D libraries
for data analysis aren't as developed and don't have as many
people working on them as R. You might be more productive
calling an R library than re-writing the same functionality in
D.
In many cases, such as graphics, speed is not an issue so a
rewrite won't help. By integrating R inside D, an existing R user
gives up nothing - you can choose how much to write in D vs R.
