
A Pamphlet against R - ycmbntrthrwaway
https://panicz.github.io/pamphlet/
======
peatmoss
So, are there out of the box libraries to estimate a zero inflated negative
binomial regression model in guile? How about to create multi-faceted plots
with < 10 lines of code?

I would _LOVE_ to do my statsing with any lisp variant, but the reality is
that R has a killer ecosystem of statistical and visualization packages.
Python had an enormous uphill battle but now has a really great story to tell
in part because it hitched itself to the rising fortunes of Bayesian stats.

Any discussion of languages has to include amount and maturity of libraries
for the purposes at hand.

This PDF has some good content. But I feel a somewhat harsh response is
warranted if your starting premise is positioning yourself against an existing
solution that many individuals use.

~~~
gumby
There's RCL which is a lisp interface to R.

[https://common-lisp.net/project/rcl/](https://common-lisp.net/project/rcl/)

A bit long in tooth but might get you what you want.

~~~
peatmoss
Cheers! Though my personal, someday dream, is to port R to Racket such that I
can freely interop. It shall be called "Arket" and verily be googleable. If
someone beats me to my nerdy, nerdy dream, so much the better.

------
lispm
If we talk about the Lisp family of languages (Lisp, Scheme, Racket, Logo,
Dylan, ISLisp, Picolisp, MDL, etc. etc.), then R is actually a Lisp dialect.
From the past. R's basic technology is rooted in the Lisp's of the 70s. Even
Fexprs are back.

~~~
ycmbntrthrwaway
It is mentioned on page 2: "However, the case of the R programming language is
particularly interesting, because initially it was just a harmless
implementation of Scheme; but then as a result of the irresponsible
experiments of mad scientists it mutated into a monster [3].", where [3] is
the link to
[https://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~ihaka/downloads/JSM-2010.pd...](https://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~ihaka/downloads/JSM-2010.pdf)

~~~
lispm
R turned into a language which used older Lisp features. It no longer
resembles Scheme, but both older and then newer Lisp systems. It even provides
OOP derived from CLOS. It's really a vey strange language which provides/uses
a lot of features, which can make it difficult to maintain (my guess having
read about the language, but have not used it). For example a mix of lazy
evaluation and fexprs can make understanding and predicting the behavior of
code very difficult.

------
bobak
Before R there was a somewhat healthy LispStat ecosystem, more recently there
is: [http://www.cliki.net/common-lisp-stat](http://www.cliki.net/common-lisp-
stat)

------
wodenokoto
An 85 page pamphlet.

------
julie1
Someone is rediscovering literate programming where the code is so meaningful
it serves as documentation of itself.

I vote for a troll disguising a boring scheme tutorial in a satire.

But it is very metaphysical à la Artistote or Giodarno Bruno ... I would say
like almost any stuff written by the functional programming adepts. I am not
sure if FP is mathematics or philosophy sometimes. I like them like some weird
religious monks producing free beers. I drink the beer, I avoid the church.

But I would say that even if I do not like scheme, I value meaningful code
too.

------
ReedJessen
This is performance art.

------
pjcheme
Awesome! I am going to read this pdf.

~~~
1812Overture
I'd love a summary when you're done. It looks interesting but intimidatingly
long.

~~~
steve19
TLDR; Has nothing to do with R (barley mentioned, pamphlet title is
clickbait). Advocates (and teaches) Scheme for computational intelligence.
Might be satire, or might be a tutorial on Scheme ... I honestly don't know.
Ends with the line "$ chmod -R 666 /" making me lean towards
satire/intelligent trolling. Is nicely typeset.

