Hi Dirk and ESS-help: It is a slow nice day on ESS-help so I will entertain a debate. Nice to see that my old friend Dirk has not frozen solid. The thermometer has recently explored some rare territory. However, I have to respectfully disagree. I didn�t feel such a commitment to progress when I wanted to add multi-way arrays to Rcpp https://www.mail-archive.com/search?l=rcpp-de...@lists.r-forge.r-project.org&q=subject:%22%5C%5BRcpp%5C-devel%5C%5D+3D+array+proof+of+concept%22&o=newest
RcppArmadillo seems like overkill here when this can be accomplished in relatively few lines of Rcpp (and even fewer if Rcpp supported it). But, I don�t want to fight with Dirk over Rcpp. I can honestly say that Rcpp has had a bigger impact on my career than ESS so I treasure it even if I don�t always agree. Beyond that I consider myself a data scientist, not a computer scientist. So, I leave it up to Dirk and Rcpp core to decide what is best (they are far more likely to be right than me). Yet, I definitely part ways with the recent Emacs upgrades. As far as I can tell, ESS is far more compliant with version 26 than 27 or 28. Certainly, part of this might be our fault as ESS developers. But, I don�t understand why some of the changes in 27 were necessary. Why do we have to set a keydef to nil for some keys before we can give them a new definition? This was not a problem for earlier releases. Furthermore, presumably, this is not a bug since the same �feature� appears in 28 as well. How are we supposed to determine these mysterious magic keys? Since it is not evident, we have to unset any key before assigning it a keydef otherwise it is a no-op. I don�t see a rationale for this direction. Also, Emacs has become more difficult to compile particularly on macOS. Even 26, is not convenient to compile with an R friendly tool chain. 27 and 28 are no better. So, gone are the days when I could compile Emacs myself. Now I am stuck with using binary distributions which makes debugging more challenging as well. Therefore, I see the line of progress leading to the very stable and friendly 26 has stagnated even as the release schedule for 27 and 28 has sped up. So, I have one machine with 26 and one with a menagerie of 26, 27 and 28 installed for testing (spurring my commentary). I use Emacs every day and I�m not particularly that bothered by this lack of progress. But, I sincerely hope that we are turning a corner and 29 will be a better experience for ESS with no magic keys, etc. Thanks to all for their support of ESS especially my fellow developers who give their time so freely! -- Rodney Sparapani, Associate Professor of Biostatistics Director for the Wisconsin Chapter of the American Statistical Association Institute for Health and Equity, Division of Biostatistics Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Campus [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
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