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Comment by roel_v | Hacker News Reader

I think (and I usually anger at least some people when I say this) that it's wrong to see R as a 'programming language'. I mean, it looks like one, and it's Turing complete so if you use that as a criterion it is a programming language, but I think it's more useful to see it as a stats software package with a text-only user interface. Approaching it this way instead of as just another language to 'pick up' makes using it much less frustrating.

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I supposed it depends on how you define a 'programming language'.

I'm not angered, I'm more wondering about the usefulness of the arbitrary line you've drawn in the sand, and even the shape of the line.

RShiney lets you build interactive webpages with advanced GUIs; if <webdev stack> counts as a programming language, why not R?

Many people like python because it lets you script things, and you can even make your script executable with a shebang at the start (!# /bin/python) -- and while true, that isn't built into R, you can run R scripts programatically (> Rscript myfile.R), or make this executable by putting it in a standard shell script.

I just got done making a DockerLambda in R. The lambda itself is simple. It takes a few inputs, gets data from S3/Files into dataframes, and passes it off to the real calculation. The actual math is done by another team.

I approached it like you described. I wouldn't want to do a really complex REST API in it, but as a wrapper for calculations, we've got a repeatable pattern to run them in a cost effective manner.

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