I like R myself but I think the problem is that most people really don’t like command line interfaces. R has a bit of an accessibility problem, basically.
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That would not just be R but all programming languages. Sadly, it's just how it has to be. One point though that I would like to underline is that accessibility has many guises. Most CLI are 100% accessible if by accessible we mean can easily be read by a screen reader.
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Yeah, I’d say the same of Python and Matlab tbh (Matlab having the added problem of being ludicrously expensive). When I mention accessibility there I’m thinking more of the (perceived?) barrier to entry. Annecdotal but I know a lot of engineering postgrads who won’t touch a CLI.
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Replying to @SadieCashbat @o_guest and
Mostly because it’s “programming” to them and programming is a scary thing they did one module on in first year and avoid like the plague.
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Here’s an interesting perspective on teaching R to undergradshttps://datahowler.wordpress.com/2016/09/10/no-more-excuses-r-is-better-than-spss-for-psychology-undergrads-and-students-agree/ …
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Yeah, I think it’s an issue of how it’s taught at early levels. If you don’t already have some programming background it can seem a little scary but is very intuitive once you get used to it.
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I think R's (and pandas') split-apply-combine paradigm might be hard for even very experienced programmers TBH. Took me a few hours of playing to 100% get it. Felt much like the kind of paradigm shifts we had to get used to in UG like when they taught us Prolog.
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Tbh the biggest issue I’ve had is figuring out R’s type system. Matlab is easy, basically everything is a type of matrix, even strings are 1 x n matrices of characters.
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That's... not necessarily a good thing.
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It’s great if you’re a mathematician. I understand matrices, I fear well constructed languages
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Ha! OK, you got me!
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