Ivo: The primary source of your problems appears to be:
"Unfortunately, for a generic programming language, R still lacks some sugar." R is **not** a generic programming language, nor was it ever meant to be one. Have you read Chambers's et al books? R was designed as a language for data analysis and graphics, not as a general programming language. This is not to say that some of your gripes/suggestions may not be useful. I did not go through them in any detail, but a couple of them at least seemed related to your misunderstanding above. Cheers, Bert On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 4:29 PM, ivo welch <ivo.we...@gmail.com> wrote: > 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. -- Bert Gunter Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics Internal Contact Info: Phone: 467-7374 Website: http://pharmadevelopment.roche.com/index/pdb/pdb-functional-groups/pdb-biostatistics/pdb-ncb-home.htm ______________________________________________ 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.