Ben Bolker wrote:
I can see that fortune("S4") is going to produce more than one possible
response
soon ... (is Achim Zeleis listening?)
Ben
In all fairness, it should probably be noted that quite a few people
swear BY S4 in addition to those who swear AT it.
-p
Frank E Harrell Jr wrote:
spencerg wrote:
Hi, Terry:
Thanks for the comments. I too vastly prefer S3 to S4. Your
Me too. My summary is this:
If you love computer science more than you value your own time, use S4.
Frank Harrell
comparison is based on much greater experience than mine.
Could you please check the link you sent? I couldn't get it to
work.
Thanks again.
Spencer
Terry Therneau wrote:
For 90 percent of what I do I strongly prefer the loose (S3) rather
than the rigid (S4) classes. So I'm closer to Rolf. My summary of S4
vs S3
A large increment in 1. nuisance to write
2. difficulty to debug
3. ability to write very obscure code 4. design
Gain
5. ability to direct automatic conversions
6. validate the contents of a class object
For simple objects 5 and 6 can be critical. Consider a date for
instance, which will often be turned into a character, added or
subtracted as a numeric, plotted, etc. Conversely, aspects of 1-4 are
less worrisome for a simple object, particularly #4: I have a
reasonable chance of "getting it right" the first time.
For a complex object such as the result of a coxph fit fit
<- coxph(Surv(time, status) ~ age + sex + treatment)
#5 makes no sense at all: as.numeric(fit)??? Number 4 and 6 are
really hard;
after 15+ years of tuning I am still modifying the list of components
in a coxph object. I know more about the computational aspects of Cox
models than almost anyone and still it's not enough. Changes are
harder with rigid classes.
With reference to #3 above, for your amusement, look at
www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/98/May/straustrup.html
the key line (to me) being "..every C++ programmer feels bound by some
mystic promise to use every damm element of the languange on every
project..."
Terry T.
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