[tech-spec] Re: Nested Loops
- From: Steve Wisdom <swisdom@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: tech-spec@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 15:39:40 -0500
--
BBands <bbands@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> :
> I find the concept of implicit loops being "better"
> than explicit loops disturbing.
I find the concept of multiple inheritance disturbing, but to each his own
To my taste the APL'ness of R is its strongest point. That's the
language's "karma". Worth noting that FORTRAN (yes, it still exists)
has incorporated vector/matrix'wise aspects in recent specifications,
perhaps in imitation of S+/R, Matlab et al
But it does swap "off by one" errors for "mis-shapen" and "forgot
drop=F" errors, in my experience, and it's unclear whether net errors
are reduced
And I agree that in undocumented R code it's hard to follow the
"shapes" of the objects as they're subscripted, reshaped, outer'ed &
etc
Also, let me shout out to Hawaii, great work on getting your toes in
the water. And I agree with Oregon's remarks that R is better suited
to "gross" data-smashing than Tradestation-workalike projects
(although I do find myself doing "stupid pet tricks" with R just
because it's handy)
If I were less ignorant I'd write an essay on how to mix & match
ts/its/zoo/Rmetrics to best effect. "One of these days". Generally
I'd advise avoiding packages altogether whilst learning the language;
there's plenty to digest in vanilla R. But price-data wrangling lends
itself to these packages
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