I finally got around to posting my list of R gripes on a blog at http://ivo-welch.blogspot.com/2012/04/r-annoyances-and-gripes.html . I did put in some time, but I do not expect anyone to read it. it was more for myself. still, if you are curious, I would love to hear where I got it wrong and where I got it right.
regards, /iaw ---- Ivo Welch (ivo.we...@gmail.com) On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 8:35 AM, ivo welch <ivo.we...@gmail.com> wrote: > "what is the problem you are trying to solve?" > > elegance, ease, and readability in my programs. > > R has morphed from a data manipulation, graphics, and stats program > into my mainstay programming language. most of this has been a huge > gain. the addition of the parallel package was another recent big > gain for me. > > some of it is a loss. I particularly lament the fact that I cannot > turn off [silent] recycling (causing great hair loss on my end at > various occasions), no applicable error line number output on error > messages; and some syntax that could be nicer. this was a prime > example of the latter. > > regards, /iaw > > [and then there are some impossible syntax desires, like in-string > substitution. would it not be nice if I could write f("use $a\n") > instead of f(paste("use", a, "\n", sep="")) ?] > > [some of my loss relates to my lack of understanding of some of the > magic behind R. I just stumbled onto the fact that I can obtain loess > x variables with l$x; until then, I was trying to figure out how to > construct names and paste to match what unlist told me. worse, I > have spotty memory. you guys reading and helping out people like me, > plus the google archives here, are angels. without your help, I could > not use R.] > > > ---- > Ivo Welch (ivo.we...@gmail.com) ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.