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by clusterhacks 847 days ago
Ok, so this is kind of funny but I also want to know - did/do you feel productive with J for stats work?

Did you ever switch to R? If so, how would you describe the two languages to a non-programmer?

1 comments

I don't think I ever actually did any stats with J, but I did play with it for a long time.

J is like an old school text adventure where you start with a blank screen that reads "You are in the woods" and, before you know it, it's Monday morning and you're considering calling out of work because you've almost decoded some elvish runes you found on a rock.

R is the single player campaign of a modern first person shooter, where you have infinite lives and your health regenerates if you sit and think for a while.

This isn't a perfect analogy. Maybe J is high school Spanish class, and R is Google translate? I remember enjoying J as a language and R as a tool. It's exciting to express new things in J. It's easy to do familiar things in R.

R also is really well documented - there was a time where experts were asking basic questions on Stack Overflow and answering them themselves, because that's where people look for documentation.

> This isn't a perfect analogy.

It's pretty damn good!

Yes. I like the wool and first personal shooter more.