Hi,
On 08/05/17 16:37, Ista Zahn wrote:
One of the key strengths of R is that packages are not akin to "fan
created mods". They are a central and necessary part of the R system.
I would tend to disagree here. R packages are in their majority not
maintained by the core R developers. Concepts, features and lifetime
depend mainly on the maintainers of the package (even though in theory
GPL will allow to somebody to take over anytime). Several packages that
are critical for processing big data and providing "modern"
visualizations introduce concepts quite different from the legacy S/R
language. I do feel that in a way, current core R shows strongly its
origin in S, while modern concepts (e.g. data.table, dplyr, ggplot, ...)
are often only available via extension packages. This is fine if one
considers R to be a statistical toolkit; as a programming language,
however, it introduces inconsistencies and uncertainties which could be
avoided if some of the "modern" parts (including language concepts)
could be more integrated in core-R.
Best regards,
Hilmar
--
Dr. Hilmar Berger, MD
Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology
Charitéplatz 1
D-10117 Berlin
GERMANY
Phone: + 49 30 28460 430
Fax: + 49 30 28460 401
E-Mail: ber...@mpiib-berlin.mpg.de
Web : www.mpiib-berlin.mpg.de
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