Comment by tekkk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tekkk | Hacker News Reader

R is a great tool but terrible programming language. There is some basic fundamentals how programming language should work which R just disregards for the sake of being different.

Okey indexes start at 1, I can get past that.

Variables are initialized with "a <- 1" okey well for each to their own.

Return requires you to wrap values with "()" so "return x" doesn't work but "return(x)" does. Umm.

You should never iterate over a dataframe except when you have to and then there's a plethora of different ways to do it. Some are better, some are worse. But isn't it nice that everyone can invent their own way of doing it? Right?

Those are what I can come up with from the top of my head. But overall the feeling I get when I code R is that it's this mystic arcane magic that requires completely new way of thinking compared to other programming languages. And it's very frustrating.

Python is better but I have my issues with it too. Mainly the fact that debugging in Python is such a pain the ass and typelessness makes reading of other people's code a nightmare at times. Also libraries like numpy, pandas and matplotlib are very convoluted with kinda bad documentation. Maybe a good IDE would solve it with Intellisense and RStudio like capabilities (again where R shines). I've tried Spyder/Rodeo/Pycharm but none of them were as simple and user-friendly as RStudio when doing data-stuff.

EDIT: Anecdote: I did some programming with a statistician who is a R-guru and he wrote terrible code in Python. Would he coded better if he had learned a different language than R? Maybe. In my opinion probably yes.

Sounds you like have a very OO background. I'd strongly encourage you to learn more about functional programming (FP). I personally believe it's a very good fit for the types of programming you commonly encounter in data science, and it leads to elegant and readable code.

I've written a bit of an intro at http://r4ds.had.co.nz/iteration.html#for-loops-vs.functional...

> There is some basic fundamentals how programming language should work which R just disregards for the sake of being different.

So, you can complain that R feels different from languages you're used to, but it's incorrect to assert that R does things for "the sake of being different." R is simply influenced by a different lineage of languages than, e.g., Python.

> Okey indexes start at 1

Languages have had 1-based indexing since Fortran. If your languages is doing numerical computing, you're going to take a lot of cues from Fortran.

> Variables are initialized with "a <- 1" okey well for each to their own.

This is how APL does assignment. Like APL, R is an array-based language (all types are vectors/arrays; all functions operate over arrays).

> Return requires you to wrap values with "()" so "return x" doesn't work but "return(x)" does. Umm.

R is highly functional. Arithmetic, assignment, and indexing operators are all functions. There are very few "statements" in the language. It's actually highly consistent with that to have return be a function, not a statement. It's actually uncommon to use return in R, since every block automatically returns its last expression.

> You should never iterate over a dataframe except when you have to and then there's a plethora of different ways to do it. Some are better, some are worse. But isn't it nice that everyone can invent their own way of doing it? Right?

A data frame implements both list and matrix semantics. This makes sense since, like a list, it is an array of differently-type arrays. But like a matrix it has a notion of rows and columns. Over time, folks have tended to move away from using matrix semantics.

> Those are what I can come up with from the top of my head. But overall the feeling I get when I code R is that it's this mystic arcane magic that requires completely new way of thinking compared to other programming languages. And it's very frustrating.

I mean, this is a fair complaint, but it's not a problem with the language. You have to learn it. At its core, R is actually a fairly simple, elegant language that has a few key principles, and some interesting and powerful design features (like delayed argument evaluation).

In "Javascript: The Good Parts", Doug Crockford says this:

"JavaScript is most despised because it isn’t SOME OTHER LANGUAGE. If you are good in SOME OTHER LANGUAGE and you have to program in an environment that only supports JavaScript, then you are forced to use JavaScript, and that is annoying. Most people in that situation don’t even bother to learn JavaScript first, and then they are surprised when JavaScript turns out to have significant differences from the SOME OTHER LANGUAGE they would rather be using, and that those differences matter."

Which reminds me of most people's attitude towards R.

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