On 25/09/2008, at 12:42 AM, Martin Maechler wrote:
<snip>
[And, yes, if you think further and are wondering: If we'd design things from scratch, we would only have S4 classes and "double" would be a proper class and "numeric" would be the class union of {"integer", "double"} ]
<snip> Well thank God you didn't design things from scratch, otherwise we'd all be constrained to use the abomination of S4 classes which make programming effectively impossible unless you are a genius of the order of John Chambers or Doug Bates or Martin Maechler. Most of us are not such geniuses and are equipped only with ordinary human minds to which S4 classes and methods are incomprehensible. Even geniuses have trouble with them. A mate of mine, whom I consider to be one of the smartest guys in whole *universe* says he can't understand the damned things either. And that's saying something. If we were forced to use S4 classes and methods, I don't think I'd be an R user. At least I wouldn't --- couldn't --- program in R and would therefore be restricted to using only the facilities that come out of the box. Which kind of defeats the purpose of R. cheers, Rolf ###################################################################### Attention:\ This e-mail message is privileged and confid...{{dropped:9}} ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.