Well, R is free and open sourced. It is based on S and Splus, which the developers decided to close-source after a while (after achieving success). R is also known as GNU S for that matter.
IMHO, R itself is a simple language and a relatively simple platform. It is a language that manipulates data but philosophically, it is not a statistical or mathematical language. The R core team seems to adhere to the view that R is a programming language where (by chance and intent) a lot of statistical tools are built on. Hence, most of the statistical libraries for R are written in R. I believe that the entire Bioconductor is written in R. Hence, the motivation for considering implementing or re-implementing R in PyPy is "natively" to bring in the strength of R (huge amounts of statistical libraries and data sets) into Python. I have to admit that my skills in this area (langauage interpreters/compilers) is rather limited to undergraduate level but I'm willing to learn more. So I'm currently reading codes on language interpreters for esoteric languages like BrainFuck simply because they are tiny but provides the relevant concepts. So, anyone like to support the idea of (re-)implementing R on PyPy? I'll need some "emotional" strength to go on this route. Also willing to hear other radical options... Another thing of interest to me is implementing modeling/simulation languages in PyPy as it will help in my future career route but my knowledge of even the simulation languages are rather limited. Please advice and comment. Cheers maurice _______________________________________________ [email protected] http://codespeak.net/mailman/listinfo/pypy-dev
