Inefficiency of SAS Programming

Wensui Liu wrote:

Thanks for pointing me to the SAS code, Dr Harrell
After reading codes, I have to say that the inefficiency is not
related to SAS language itself but the SAS programmer. An experienced
SAS programmer won't use much of hard-coding, very adhoc and difficult
to maintain.
I agree with you that in the SAS code, it is a little too much to
evaluate predictions. such complex data step actually can be replaced
by simpler iml code.

Agreed that the SAS code could have been much better. ?I programmed in SAS
for 23 years and would have done it much differently. ?But you will find
that the most elegant SAS program re-write will still be a far cry from the
elegance of R.

Frank

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 5:57 PM, Frank E Harrell Jr
<f.harrell at vanderbilt.edu> wrote:

If anyone wants to see a prime example of how inefficient it is to
program
in SAS, take a look at the SAS programs provided by the US Agency for
Healthcare Research and Quality for risk adjusting and reporting for
hospital outcomes at http://www.qualityindicators.ahrq.gov/software.htm .
?The PSSASP3.SAS program is a prime example. ?Look at how you do a vector
product in the SAS macro language to evaluate predictions from a logistic
regression model. ?I estimate that using R would easily cut the
programming
time of this set of programs by a factor of 4.

Frank
--
Frank E Harrell Jr ? Professor and Chair ? ? ? ? ? School of Medicine
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Department of Biostatistics ? Vanderbilt University

--
Frank E Harrell Jr ? Professor and Chair ? ? ? ? ? School of Medicine
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Department of Biostatistics ? Vanderbilt University