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by pxc 202 days ago
What's wrong with R? I used it and liked it in undergrad. I certainly didn't use it as seriously as the users who made Python popular, but to this day I remember R fondly and would never choose Python for a personal project.

My R use was self-taught, as well. I refused to use proprietary software for school all through high school and university, so I used R where we were expected to use Excel or MatLab (though I usually used GNU Octave for the latter), including for at least one or two math classes. I don't remember anything being tricky or difficult to work with.
1 comments
SoftTalker 202 days ago
R is the most haphazard programming environment I've ever used. It feels like an agglomeration of hundreds of different people's shell aliases and scripting one-liners.

I'll grant my only exposure has been a two- or three-day "Intro to R" class but I ran screaming from that experience and have never touched it again.

It maybe worked against me that I am a programmer, not a statistician or researcher.

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pxc 202 days ago
When I used it I was a computer science student. But I wasn't reading anyone else's code or trying to maintain anything complex, which is why I asked what I did. I'm sure there are quirks I never had to deal with.

So is it just that the stdlib is really big and messy?

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