Dear R developers---I just spent half a day debugging an R program, which had two bugs---I selected the wrongly named variable, which turns out to have been a scalar, which then happily multiplied as if it was a matrix; and another wrongly named variable from a data frame, that triggered no error when used as a[["name"]] or a$name . there should be an option to turn on that throws an error inside R when one does this. I cannot imagine that there is much code that wants to reference non-existing columns in data frames.
I know you guys are saints for developing without financial support. but maybe we non-insider end-users can help by putting up a bounty list on R-project for us end-users to contribute to? I would pledge $500 to a $10,000 fund that funds a project to comprehensively enhance the programming and debugging aspects of R. it would only take 20 of us to make this possible. personally, I think basic nudgeware is the way to go. when a user starts R in interactive mode, there should be a note that says, please donate $20 to the R foundation to support the development. press enter to continue or enter your contribution number to avoid this message in the future . you can even accept the same string if need be. it's a nudge only, not a requirement. regards, /iaw ---- Ivo Welch (ivo.we...@gmail.com) http://www.ivo-welch.info/ J. Fred Weston Professor of Finance Anderson School at UCLA, C519 Director, UCLA Anderson Fink Center for Finance and Investments Free Finance Textbook, http://book.ivo-welch.info/ Editor, Critical Finance Review, http://www.critical-finance-review.org/ ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
