From rossini at blindglobe.net  Fri Feb 27 19:23:14 2004
From: rossini at blindglobe.net (A.J. Rossini)
Date: Fri Feb 27 19:24:30 2004
Subject: [Rd] Packages in R & Java
In-Reply-To: <8CBAA121CEB4D5118CB200508BB2BBEF0317EC85@xmx8lonib.lonib.commerzbank.com>
	(John Marsland's message of "Fri, 27 Feb 2004 17:51:01 -0000")
References: <8CBAA121CEB4D5118CB200508BB2BBEF0317EC85@xmx8lonib.lonib.commerzbank.com>
Message-ID: <85brnktm99.fsf@servant.blindglobe.net>

"Marsland, John" <John.Marsland@CommerzbankIB.com> writes:

> Clearly, I disagree in some areas. But you raise an interesting, but perhaps
> unintended, question:
>
> Do we think that R is a programming language in its own right where we seek
> to develop code and then build on that code for example in a object oriented
> way? 

My answer is: "we think that R is a programming language in
its own right where we seek to develop code and then build on that
code".  Whether object orientation is a good approach is a completely
different issue.  (note: I've spent significant amounts of time with
S4 classes on 2 projects, this may color my attitudes in non-obvious
ways).

> Or, is R a mechanism for combining lots of C/C++/Fortran libraries (written
> by suitably qualified experts) at the command line in an easy to use
> interpreted fashion in order to crunch the numbers and display them nicely?

For the general setting, think Python and SWIG.  Why not both?

> Surely, if it's a speed issue we should try to help to make R faster for
> these sorts of problems rather than just bailing out into C at the first
> opportunity?

Are you volunteering?  I'll never find the time in the near future.

Generalized optimization is very hard (or: high risk for possibly
little gain).   Specific examples/contexts are easy, of course, with
the ease narrowing as the scope of speedup narrows. 

R has improved beyond where I thought it would go back when I first
started using it (8 or 9 years? its been a while), but
across-the-board improvements in performance have always taken time. 


-- 
rossini@u.washington.edu            http://www.analytics.washington.edu/ 
Biomedical and Health Informatics   University of Washington
Biostatistics, SCHARP/HVTN          Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
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[Rd] Packages in R & Java
A.J. Rossini