What makes R different from other programming languages?
I've read several replies to this question already and they seem to have missed the one point that most irritated the Java programmers to whom I tried to teach R. They HATED the "object-oriented" material, both S4 and especially S3, as it did not match the style of OO programming that had been pounded into them. The ones I tried to teach hated S3 and S4 methods so much, that some even refused to learn to learn them on the grounds that they "weren't OO". Now it could easily have been my approach as I was not well equipped at the time to "compare and contrast", never the less, I would approach this aspect carefully as the two approaches are so different. I guess the other aspect which I take the most time to describe to any programmer from other more traditional languages is the working with vectors. To use R effectively, you must move data in large chunks; the standard paradigm of looping over the data is the fastest way to write a slow program. I find it takes a good long while for programmers to make the switch to working with vectors (more than a month of use), but they grasp the concept quickly and like it. Cheers, Mark
johannes rara wrote:
My intention is to give a presentation about R programming language for software developers. I would like to ask, what are the things that make R different from other programming languages? What are the specific cases where Java/C#/Python developer might say "Wow, that was neat!"? What are the things that are easy in R, but very difficult in other programming languages (like Java)? Thanks, -J
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