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by thebelal 4242 days ago
R (1976)[1] and Matlab (1984)[2] both predate Python (1991)[3], so I guess the answer is because the 'existing' language didn't exist.

As far as Julia goes it aims to bring strong typing and very fast native performance for numerical operations. Neither of which R, Matlab, or Python provide. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

[1]: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_(programming_language)

[2]: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATLAB

[3]: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language)
1 comments
jghn 4242 days ago
Uhh, R is not from 1976, S is - as you note from your footnotes.

There's a direct and strong lineage, but they're not the same.

As someone who remembers when version 1.0 of R was released, I can say pretty confidently that it was well after 1976 :)

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