R history

The history of R language might suggest that epoch of universal languages is coming to the end and the future now belong to specialized languages. Since 2000 it manages to push its ways to the club of popular languages. Only LUA and Ruby can boast the same.

R is a programming language and software environment for statistical computing and graphics. The R language is widely used among statisticians and data miners for developing statistical software and for data analysis. Polls and surveys of data miners are showing R's popularity has increased substantially in recent years. Download R-3.2.0 for Windows. The R-project for statistical computing.

• Installation and other instructions
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Historically R is an open source (under GPL license) re-implementation of the S programming language combined with lexical scoping semantics inspired by Scheme.

S language was created by John Chambers while at Bell Labs as one of several statistical computing languages that were designed at Bell Laboratories. Initial implementation was done  in 1975–1976 for the GCOS operating system. When UNIX/32V was ported to the (then new) 32-bit DEC VAX, computing on the Unix platform became feasible for S. In late 1979, S was ported from GCOS to UNIX, which would become the new primary platform. In 1980 the first version of S was distributed outside Bell Laboratories and in 1981 source versions were made available.

In 1984 two books were published by the research team at Bell Laboratories: S: An Interactive Environment for Data Analysis and Graphics^[by R. A. Becker (Author), J. M. Chambers  (1984 Brown Book) and Extending the S System. by R. A. Becker and J. M. Chambers.

Since 1984 the source code for S became licensed through AT&T Software Sales for education and commercial purposes. All that means that S language is pretty old. Older then Python, Roby and Java and as old as Perl.

R was created by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and is currently developed by the R Development Core Team, of which Chambers is a member.

R is named partly after the first names of the first two R authors and partly as a play on the name of S. The first beta version (0.49) was released from April 23, 1997. Version 1.0 which was considered by developers to be stable enough for production use was released on Feb 29, 2000.

R is a GNU project licensed under GNU General Public License. The source code for the R software environment is written primarily in C, Fortran, and R.  R's popularity has increased substantially in recent years.

Both binaries for Windows and Linux are available from R-website:

• Download R 3.2.0 for Windows (62 megabytes, 32/64 bit)
  • Installation and other instructions
  • New features in this version

As the language R does not follow the principle of least astonishment (POLA). The latter means that the language should behave in such a way as to minimize confusion for experienced users

Milestones

The full list of changes is maintained in the "R News" file at CRAN.[31] Some highlights are listed below for several major releases.

• February 1, 1984  the book S An Interactive Environment for Data Analysis and Graphics  was published.
• 0.16
  This is the last alpha version developed primarily by Ihaka and Gentleman. Much of the basic functionality from the "White Book" (see S history) was implemented. The mailing lists commenced on April 1, 1997.
• 0.49
  1997-04-23 This is the oldest available source release, and compiles on a limited number of Unix-like platforms. CRAN is started on this date, with 3 mirrors that initially hosted 12 packages. Alpha versions of R for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS are made available shortly after this version.
• 0.60
  1997-12-05 R becomes an official part of the GNU Project. The code is hosted and maintained on CVS.
• 1.0
  2000-02-29 Considered by its developers stable enough for production use.[32]
• 1.4
  2001-12-19 S4 methods are introduced and the first version for Mac OS X is made available soon after.
• 2.0
  2004-10-04 Introduced lazy loading, which enables fast loading of data with minimal expense of system memory.
• 2.1
  2005-04-18 Support for UTF-8 encoding, and the beginnings of internationalization and localization for different languages.
• 2.11
  2010-04-22 Support for Windows 64 bit systems.
• 2.13
  2011-04-14 Adding a new compiler function that allows speeding up functions by converting them to byte-code.
• 2.14
  2011-10-31 Added mandatory namespaces for packages. Added a new parallel package.
• 2.15
  2012-03-30 New load balancing functions. Improved serialization speed for long vectors.
• 3.0
  2013-04-03 Support
• R version 3.1.3 (Smooth Sidewalk) has been released on 2015-03-09.
• R version 3.2.0 (Full of Ingredients) has been released on 2015-04-16
• R 3.2.1 (World-Famous Astronaut) prerelease versions will appear starting June 8, 2015. Final release is scheduled for 2015-06-18.

NEWS CONTENTS

Old News ;-)

Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes :  Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce :  Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS :  Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development :  Scripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month :  How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D

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Last modified: March, 29, 2020