Talk:R (programming language)/Archive 3

Weight on language over environment in opening sentence(s)
Current article: "R is a programming language".

First line of the (official) R Project's main page: "R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics." First line of the (official) R Project's about page: "R is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics."

(Note: emphasis added by me in the above quotations.)

The current introduction exclusively mentions the language identity in the opening definition, and first paragraphs. Only later is the environment mentioned, seemingly as a subordinate issue. That doesn't fit with the definitions/descriptions given by the R Project themselves.

—DIV (137.111.13.4 (talk) 01:42, 11 February 2022 (UTC))


 * Of course, this article is explicitly about the programming language aspect, but maybe that shouldn't be the case. Maybe it should be moved to "R (computing)", say.  Alternatively, what about adding a new "R (software environment)" article to complement the existing one??
 * —DIV (137.111.13.4 (talk) 01:45, 11 February 2022 (UTC))

typical
A recent edit summary says it is not typical to use R from the command line. Is there a WP:RS for that? Does that mean by number of people, or amount of time it is used by different people? (That is, it is weighted by usage/person.) This might also affect the above discussion about language vs. environment. Note, for example, C is a programming language, but Visual C is an environment for developing C programs. Gah4 (talk) 21:42, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Seems to me that the intent of the original phrasing was that R is typically used interactively in a REPL; whether that REPL is launched through the main CLI executable or RStudio doesn't seem particularly important. bonob (talk) 10:51, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I know about REPL, but didn't recognize the acronym, so had to look it up. I didn't read the original that way, but maybe. Gah4 (talk) 14:09, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I know about REPL, but didn't recognize the acronym, so had to look it up. I didn't read the original that way, but maybe. Gah4 (talk) 14:09, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I know about REPL, but didn't recognize the acronym, so had to look it up. I didn't read the original that way, but maybe. Gah4 (talk) 14:09, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Ok
Function Sjsjsksjdh Jddjj 2409:4063:6C8D:C9D:0:0:B28B:4808 (talk) 13:02, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi
Yeah 86.2.214.41 (talk) 05:33, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

footnote numbering
The first footnote I see is #6. What happened to #1-#5? Socialresearch (talk) 15:10, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
 * They're in the infobox. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 16:05, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Ah, okay, thanks. Socialresearch (talk) 22:06, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

useR! conference list
I had just done some work to try to improve the useR! section but I am not sure if the conference needs so much space, especially with the list of previous venues. The initial addition of the useR! section did not include the list and when it was added, it was shorter only listing conferences up until 2012. Since the article does not highlight specific useR! conferences, it might be best to remove the list entirely. What do you all think? Moon motif (talk) 10:43, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Separating out Milestones section content?
Should the content of the Milestones section be separated out? I feel like parts of it are more suited to the History section like R becoming part of the official GNU project in release 0.60 or the Features section like the pipe operator  and anonymous function shortcut syntax in release 4.1.0. This is even more opinion-based but some of the included milestones don't seem like actual milestones? I really don't mean to offend anyone but including release 3.3.3's deprecation of Windows XP support or 2.11's 64-bit Windows support does not seem historic? (I had not heard of R then so I do not know for sure but it seems normal to deprecate old operating systems that have been succeeded and support new architectures) Considering how much real estate the Milestones section takes up, I'm unsure of how to navigate this. Also, I don't feel comfortable being single judge to decide what releases to or not to keep. Moon motif (talk) 07:58, 17 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I support trimming it and moving it to the history section. The selection of things to include seems like blatant original research right now. We should be basing it on what changes are covered in sources beyond the R changelog. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 08:27, 17 January 2023 (UTC)