[isoprophlex]

The type system is so abhorrent, it makes me wonder if it's actually proper to call R a real programming language

[kgwgk]

"There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses."

[dunefox]

This crappy quote is always used to justify bad design.

[isoprophlex]

I'm sorry, did you mean

    [1] "There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses."

:^)

[goatlover]

And from a different point of view, real programming languages have built-in vectorization and 1-based arrays ;)

[mike_ivanov]

what specifically is abhorrent about it?

[isoprophlex]

The coercion always gets on my nerves, JavaScript gets a bad rep but R is pretty damn warty too; weird ass data types ('ordered factor', anyone) that just seem so very far away from design choices in other languages without being particularly ergonomic or aesthetically appealing

[kyllo]

The data types make sense to statisticians. Ordered factors are great when you need to fit, say, an ordered logit regression model.

[mike_ivanov]

Which coercion specifically are you talking about? Could you give an example?

Weird data types: R had been designed for and by statisticians with their specific needs in mind, which indeed could look weird to regular people.