Why Learn R Programming Language?

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Why Learn R Programming Language?

R is weird, if you are coming from other programming languages, especially those that come out of the C tradition — which is the most common base for languages — be it Perl, Python, Basic or any of C languages. Some of the operators are weird, the function names non-obvious, the arrays start with 1 rather 0.

Some of the functions are cumbersome to type too — the dpylr pipe as %>% can be annoying to type repeatably — which is why RStudio contains shortcuts to speed programming. Likewise, the same can be said about the <- assignment operator, which also is obnoxious to type compared to what most other languages use.

But what makes great R pretty awesome is it is an actually quite compact language for creating graphs, charts and even maps due to the pipe mechanism and many very powerful, well designed libraries. The libraries are also easy to explore and understand — you can call R functions without parameters and if they aren’t compiled C code, will output the code that makes up the function.

Matplotlib is powerful in Python, but it really isn’t as fast and easy to use ggplot2 and the grammar of geometry. Matplotlib does many things good, but it’s a lot more fiddly and the labeling functions don’t work all that well without writing a bunch of your own code. There is plotnine for Python which attempts to bring the best of ggplot2 to Python, but I find a lot of the best functions in R are missing. So it kind of sucks.

Anti Virus Rant

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I don’t understand what the purpose of anti-virus software is or why you should have to buy it. Shouldn’t an operating system be secure and provide automatic upgrades, so you don’t need external software just to ensure your computer is secure ?

Then again in 2016, I don’t know why anybody would use anything but Ubuntu Linux on their computer. It takes care of the all upgrades itself and you never have to pay for add ons. The software is quite well developed at this point and unless you have special technical needs, there isn’t much of anything that can’t be done using.

I hope no-excuse absentee voting becomes the law with the constitutional amendment 🗳

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I hope no-excuse absentee voting becomes the law with the constitutional amendment 🗳

I like the idea of being able to register as a permanent absentee voter, and having my ballot mailed to me prior to every election. Then I will have several convenient options when to comes to voting:

  1. Fill out the ballot, get a stamp and mail it to the Board of Elections
  2. Fill out the ballot, drop it off at ANY Early Voting or Regular Voting site
  3. Choose to vote on the machine at any Early Voting site or my regular voting site

That way I don’t have to worry or plan ahead should I be out of town on Election Day. I’ll have the ballot whether or not I need it or not. That said, I think I’d much rather fill out my ballot from the privacy of my home, then in a flimsy privacy booth with peering eyes around, and having to manually stuff it in the machine.