Inefficiency of SAS Programming

Immersion therapy can be done at a later stage after the 
newly baptized R  corporate user is happy with the fact that he can do 
most of his legacy code in R easily now .

 I have treading water in the immersion for over a year now.


 Most SAS consultants and corporate users are eager to try out R ..but 
they are scared of immersion especially in these cut back times  ...so 
this could be a middle step...let me go ahead and create the wrapper SAS 
package as a middle ware between r and sas ..

and we will let the invisible hands of  free market decide :))

regards,

ajay

www.decisionstats.com <http://www.decisionstats.com>

I am not a Marxist. 
Karl Marx <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/k/karlmarx131048.html> 

On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 8:01 PM, Marc Schwartz 
<marc_schwartz at comcast.net <mailto:marc_schwartz at comcast.net>> wrote:

    on 02/27/2009 07:57 AM Frank E Harrell Jr wrote:

     > Ajay ohri wrote:

     >>
     >> I would like to know if we can create a package in which r functions
     >> are renamed closer to sas language.doing so will help people

    familiar

     >> to SAS to straight away take to R for their work,thus decreasing the
     >> threshold for acceptance - and then get into deeper

    understanding later.

     >>
     >> since it is a package it would be optional only for people

    wanting to

     >> try out R from SAS.. Do we have such a package right now..it

    basically

     >> masks R functions to the equivalent function in another language

    just

     >> for user ease /beginners
     >>
     >> for example
     >>
     >> creating function for means
     >>  procmeans<-function(x,y)
     >> + {
     >> summary (
     >> subset(x,select=c(x,y))
     >> +
     >> )
     >>
     >> creating function for importing csv
     >>
     >> procimport <-function(x,y)
     >> + {
     >> read.csv(
     >> textConnection(x),row.names=y,na.strings="  "
     >> +
     >> )
     >>
     >>
     >> creating function fo describing data
     >>
     >> procunivariate<-function(x)
     >> + {
     >> summary(x)
     >> +
     >> )
     >>
     >> regards,
     >>
     >> ajay

     >
     > Ajay,
     >
     > This will generate major confusion among users of all types and

    be hard

     > to maintain.  A better approach is to get Bob Muenchen's

    excellent book

     > and keep it nearby.
     >
     > Frank

    I whole heartedly agree with Frank here. It may be one thing to have a
    "translation" process in place based upon some form of logical mapping
    between the two languages (as Bob's book provides). But is another thing
    entirely to actually start writing functions that provide wrappers
    modeled on SAS based PROCs.

    If you do this, then you only serve to obfuscate the fundamental
    philosophical and functional differences between the two languages and
    doom a new useR to missing all of R's benefits. They will continue to
    try to figure out how to use R based upon their "SAS intuition" rather
    than developing a new set of coding and even statistical paradigms.

    Having been through the SAS to S/R transition myself, having used SAS
    for much of the 90's and now having used R for over 7 years, I can speak
    from personal experience and state that the only way to achieve the
    requisite proficiency with R is immersion therapy.

    Regards,

    Marc Schwartz