Rolf,
Fair comments, mostly.
> By and large the difficulties arise only in obscure contexts, when
> the user is trying to do something sophisticated.
But in the case at hand, the user was doing something simple, and got caught
when the function tried to be overly clever. That's rather unfair to him. The
ongoing chain of examples and counterarguments got quite obscure though.
> *Mostly* R is very easy to use and does exactly what the user would
> expect.
Less true than you think. We've gotton so close and intimate that we forget
how
complicated the package actually is. We lose track of how much we know.
English spelling poses few conundrums to a literature major, the exceptions and
special cases go below the level of conscious thought. (No I'm not hinting
that
R is an inconsistent as English - no computer system is that bad. Though come
to think of it CMS came close).
I have had this argument most often with SAS wizards who think they should
use
it in a beginners course, because its "simple to use". But nothing whose
printed documentation takes up 6 feet of shelf is particularly simple. R is not
a small system either.
Terry
______________________________________________
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.
