From berger at mpiib-berlin.mpg.de  Tue May  9 09:47:47 2017
From: berger at mpiib-berlin.mpg.de (Hilmar Berger)
Date: Tue, 9 May 2017 09:47:47 +0200
Subject: [Rd] A few suggestions and perspectives from a PhD student
In-Reply-To: <CA+vqiLG=mDFOiWScr4TCVjkwszXo+38ZTFB4T-7UvqbKzwy+7Q@mail.gmail.com>
References: <FCBC5362-8436-487D-95A0-65CB5924BD29@idi.ntnu.no>
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Message-ID: <4fdf0b2c-0393-aab3-dc93-84345baa7f67@mpiib-berlin.mpg.de>

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
Charit?platz 1
D-10117 Berlin
GERMANY

Phone:  + 49 30 28460 430
Fax:    + 49 30 28460 401
  
E-Mail: berger at mpiib-berlin.mpg.de
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[Rd] A few suggestions and perspectives from a PhD student
Hilmar Berger