The attachment of my response to Sicco Schets e-mail may have been
misleading. But it occurred during a particularly frustrating time in using
Splus. I am an experienced programmer and applications developer. I have
worked in other languages. I like S and its related languages in part
because I have experience using APL, an older language upon which S seems to
be based and which I always considered one of the most powerful languages.
Let me give you an example of the documentation; I am writing an
application on the Windows platform in which I am using the GUI commands.
In order to add a title to a graph page I use GuiCreate("MainTitle",...).
In checking the documentation in the Help file included with 2000, I find no
indication as to which parameter to use to enter the text of the title. I
eventually solved the problem, but the solution was not intuitive. My time
is expensive, I can't spend it searching for such basic information.
As far as the problem that was presented in the original e-mail, I expect
that statements such as If/Else to be basic to a programming language.
Those statements should not change whether you go backward or forward in
version, or across platforms.
I get the feeling that Insightful is trying to sell its product as a
development language. If this is so they must accept the responsibility of
addressing compatibility and documentation issues. In fact the
compatibility issues can often be resolved via proper documentation. If
these are not addressed then the software will probably remain a niche
product. This would be a shame as I agree that the potential for the
language is almost limitless.
Harvey
-----Original Message-----
From: Gunter, Bert [SMTP:bert_gunter@merck.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 10:40 AM
To: 'Monder, Harvey'
Cc: 's-news@wubios.wustl.edu'
Subject: Re: [S] Unix vs PC S Version problems
To all: In partial defense of S-Plus and to (I hope) stimulate
thoughtful
responses.
A few points:
1. The view expressed below by Harvey Monder is harsh, but makes at
least
one valid point: S is a complex language that makes a lot of demands
of the
user. I would suggest that at least some of the problems experienced
by
Sicco Schets may, in fact, not be problems at all, but simply a
result of
his inexperience with the language(as he, himself, acknowledged).
That is,
the usage IS documented and correct but he has simply not understood
it
fully. Of course, there are problems, and I do not mean to dismiss
everything he wrote. I leave it to those more expert than I to sort
things
out.
2. That said, what Prof. Ripley finds clear and straightforward
should not
be used as a guide for what the rest of us should find clear and
straightforward. Given S-Plus's complexity, clear, effective
documentation
is vital -- especially for applications oriented users who have no
need to
engage in S's serious software development capabilities. I think
that there
is broad agreement even among those of us who find S indispensable
that
documentation is one of S-Plus's weaker points. I know that there
are good
reasons for this: given limited resources and the demands of the
marketplace, documentation usually takes a back seat to feature
development.
I know that Insightful is trying to maintain a better balance here,
but they
clearly have room for improvement.
3. One way Insightful has tried to provide functionality to the
applications-oriented user (who are probably the bulk of S-Plus's
intended
market) is through the S-Plus GUI. However, many of us have found
the GUI to
be more of a problem than a help. This is certainly a matter of
personal
style, and I do not mean to imply that many others have not found it
to be
key to accessing S-Plus's extraordinary capabilties. But many of us
prefer
the language's inherently greater flexibility and power even if we
don't
develop software. This means that the language has to serve both the
needs
of "casual" appliations-oriented users as well as those who want to
write
serious data analysis software applications, for which, I think, S
is
without peer (nothing else even comes close!). The recent
controversy about
the new class system highlights the difficulty here: it may be that
the
changes that improve the languages capabilities for serious
developers may
make it more difficult for casual users. Again, this is a difficult
balance,
and I hope that Insightful will continue to look at this issue with
the
intention of possibly providing tools or modifications IF (and I
emphasize
"IF") this does, indeed, turn out to be a problem for a significant
number
of folks.
4. In the end, of course, one's choice of what to use for data
analysis
software is a personal decision that depends on one's individual
needs and
capabilities. However, I think it fair to say that any serious data
analyst
who dismisses S-Plus because of a few comments on this or any other
list or
even because of new release bugginess does themselves a disservice.
Many of
us "ordinary" S-Plus users have found that the language's
extraordinary
power, the tremendous graphics capabilities, and the enormous range
of data
analysis methodology that is either built-in or available from
user-contributed libraries -- much of which cannot be found anywhere
else --
makes the effort worthwhile, despite the occasional frustrations.
May I also
say that the user community on this list is remarkably positive and
helpful;
having statisticians like Professors Ripley, Venables, Harrell (or
non-Professor Therneau) regularly monitor and offer help to users is
simply
fantastic.
So please consider S-Plus carefully. Finally, you should take
advantage of
resources beyond that immediately provided by Insightful and this
list --
especially the two books by Profs. Venables and Ripley - Modern
Applied
Statistics with S-Plus(MASS) and S Programming. I have found the
latter to
be especially helpful in my own struggles with the language.
Best regards to all,
Bert Gunter
Biometrics Research RY 70-38
Merck & Company
P.O. Box 2000
Rahway, NJ 07065-0900
Phone: (732) 594-7765
mailto: bert_gunter@merck.com
"The business of the statistician is to catalyze the scientific
learning
process." -- George E.P. Box
-----Original Message-----
From: Monder, Harvey [mailto:Harvey.Monder@pharma.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 9:23 AM
To: 'Sicco Schets'; Prof Brian Ripley
Cc: 's-news@wubios.wustl.edu'
Subject: Re: [S] Differences between UNIX and PC version of Splus
As far as I am concerned, unless the documentation issues in Splus
are
improved and the backward compatibility and cross platform
compatibility are
addressed (at least via documentation) I can not consider Splus as a
serious
programming language.
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