Messages from Usenet group comp.lang.idl-pvwave, compiled by Paulo Penteado
Folks, I not *really* advocating we all give up IDL for R, but there are some things R does better than IDL. And, I readily admit, there are a *ton* of things IDL does better than R. But R does show up in the strangest places these days. Here is a site that came to my attention this morning that has tips for astronomers. http://www.sr.bham.ac.uk/~ajrs/r-project.html It might be worth having a look. Cheers, David -- David Fanning, Ph.D. Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming (www.dfanning.com) Sepore ma de ni thui. ("Perhaps thou speakest truth.")
In article <MPG.2415e7556ee46cff9897b6@news.giganews.com>, David Fanning <news@dfanning.com> wrote: > But R does show up in the strangest places these > days. Here is a site that came to my attention this > morning that has tips for astronomers. > > http://www.sr.bham.ac.uk/~ajrs/r-project.html > > It might be worth having a look. Hmm, the graphics are nice! http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/ Francis
In the field of statistical modelling, R performs much better than IDL
On Mar 3, 1:37 pm, fbur...@nyx.net (Francis Burton) wrote: > Hmm, the graphics are nice! I originally picked up R several years ago as a tool for making high quality graphics. IMHO, R beats IDL hands down for ease and quality of plots. And for statistics, well, that's what it is for. I've never even considered using IDL for mixed-effect modeling. But I still use IDL for many, many things. Computer languages are not quite like marriage - I think it is acceptable to be in serious relationships with more than one at a time. Of course juggling multiple relationships is fraught with danger - witness my continual print, x in R and print(x) in IDL... Mike
Mike writes: > I originally picked up R several years ago as a tool for making high > quality graphics. IMHO, R beats IDL hands down for ease and quality > of plots. And for statistics, well, that's what it is for. I've > never even considered using IDL for mixed-effect modeling. But I > still use IDL for many, many things. Computer languages are not quite > like marriage - I think it is acceptable to be in serious > relationships with more than one at a time. Of course juggling > multiple relationships is fraught with danger - witness my continual > print, x in R and print(x) in IDL... Here is a poem I ran across this morning that sums the matter up nicely: http://poems.com/poem.php?date=14309 Cheers, David -- David Fanning, Ph.D. Fanning Software Consulting, Inc. Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/ Sepore ma de ni thui. ("Perhaps thou speakest truth.")
David Fanning writes: > Here is a poem I ran across this morning that sums > the matter up nicely: > > http://poems.com/poem.php?date=14309 Other news about R this morning: R is not immune from the "sky is falling" problem either: http://tinyurl.com/ap7hdq Cheers, David -- David Fanning, Ph.D. Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming (www.dfanning.com) Sepore ma de ni thui. ("Perhaps thou speakest truth.")
On Mar 5, 12:10 pm, David Fanning <n...@dfanning.com> wrote: > Other news about R this morning: R is not immune > from the "sky is falling" problem either: > http://tinyurl.com/ap7hdq No which of my loves I chose, I will always shoot myself in the other foot eventually. :-)
On Mar 5, 2:09 pm, Mike <Michael.Mill...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Mar 5, 12:10 pm, David Fanning <n...@dfanning.com> wrote: > >> Other news about R this morning: R is not immune >> from the "sky is falling" problem either: >> http://tinyurl.com/ap7hdq > > No which of my loves I chose, I will always shoot myself in the other > foot eventually. :-) Hi, Some folks might initially shy away from R based upon its pass-by- value behavior as it comes out of the box. For big blobs of data that can be a real pain. It would be a mistake, however, to think that R can't pass by reference. I won't pretend to understand how it works, but some of the clever R authors have developed techniques to employ pass-by-reference in R. One example is the pretty-easy-to-use R.oo (http://www1.maths.lth.se/help/R/R.oo/), but there are other examples in R. > But I > still use IDL for many, many things. Computer languages are not quite > like marriage - I think it is acceptable to be in serious > relationships with more than one at a time. Of course juggling > multiple relationships is fraught with danger - witness my continual > print, x in R and print(x) in IDL... Man, you can say that again! Another is IDL>source("my_program.pro") and R>.compile "my_program.r" Argh! Cheers, Ben
ben.bighair writes: > Man, you can say that again! Another is IDL>source("my_program.pro") > and R>.compile "my_program.r" Argh! Here is my R experienced summed up in a nutshell this morning: http://flowingdata.com/2009/03/06/because-its-friday-correla tion/ Cheers, David -- David Fanning, Ph.D. Fanning Software Consulting, Inc. Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/ Sepore ma de ni thui. ("Perhaps thou speakest truth.")