
The history of R's predecessor, S, from co-creator Rick Becker [video] - sndean
http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2016/07/rick-becker-s-talk.html
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nerdponx
I had no idea Tukey invented the words "software" and "bit"

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api_or_ipa
Was R named as such because it's one letter before S (and therefore a
regression?).

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huac
"The name is partly based on the (first) names of the first two R authors
(Robert Gentleman and Ross Ihaka), and partly a play on the name of the Bell
Labs language ‘S’." \- R FAQ

[https://cran.r-project.org/doc/FAQ/R-FAQ.html#Why-is-R-
named...](https://cran.r-project.org/doc/FAQ/R-FAQ.html#Why-is-R-named-R_003f)

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joncrane
Oh wow. We used "S plus" at one of my previous jobs (and I wouldn't be
surprised if they still do) because they had a paid product. This was at a
conservative government agency.

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peatmoss
I have a friend at the Census who is, in principle, allowed to use R or
Python, but is definitely aware of a strong historic bias for commercial
statistical software--SAS mainly. That's the weak form of pro-commercial
government bias. The strong form is that there are, I'm told, agencies in
which only "certified" statistical software can be used.

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hatmatrix
Hence the existence of Revolution Analytics (from which this blog is posted).

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keithpeter
_" The story is also coloured with anecdotes from various other luminaries at
Bell Labs at the time, including John Tukey (the pioneer of exploratory data
analysis and the inventor of the words "software" and "bit"), and Kernighan
and Ritchie (who were upstairs designing Unix and the C language at the same
time S was being developed)."_

With Shannon still around(?) that must have been some place to be.

Meta: nice to be able to just download the mp4 video for offline playing - no
flash player to fiddle with.

