add ideas about topics to write about

_drafts/why-r-is-a-trash-language.md

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+---
+layout : post
+title  : "R is a Terrible Programming Language"
+date   : 2024-02-21 19:00
+---
+
+Into text here. say it was in your head but writing it prompted by a similar
+article liked here: https://www.hendrik-erz.de/post/a-rant
+
+## What R does well
+
+### small exploratory analyses
+
+something that won't be used by others, or does not matter that it dependencies
+will be outdated in 2 years
+
+quick prototyping on datasets coming from CSV files
+
+in relation to the previous point: calculating descriptive stats and stat
+modelling like linear regression
+
+### plotting
+
+ggplot works well and is usually quite intuitive
+
+### Niche packages 
+
+this is both good and bad, for several years there werent that many packages to
+compete with `data.table` in terms of functionality and speed but python catched
+up and surpassed it with the `polars` package.
+
+## What makes it diffiult to use R
+
+### For Statisticians by Statisticians
+
+1. There are many bizzare language design decisions, like inconsistent fucntion
+   names.
+2. this meme account showing compatibility with a proprietary language used by
+   nobody: https://twitter.com/WhyDoesR
+3. The userbase has close to 0 knowledge about SWE, good coding practices and
+   using version control best exmaple of this is several OOP packages, with no
+   consensus which one should be used.
+4. Despite CRAN having many packages, the majority of them are very poorly
+   written and barely usable and not very well maintained
+5. The entire ecosystem has been hijacked by one company:
+
+     -  and this company appears to be pivoring into Python (first by making R
+   tools work better with R but it is likely they will abandon R altogether,
+   they appear to be sponsoring Python focused packages and they proably see
+   that they make the most money from putting Python into production through
+
+   their tools so this works for them)
+     - Rstudio sucks and isn't a serious IDE 
+     - Other than inividual voices stating that their packages suck there
+       appears to be zero resistance against them (because basic user of R
+       doesn't even understnad what dependencies are)
+6. It gives the academia ivory tower vibes (bunch of academics developing the
+   core language, not interacting with outside users, users mainly also in
+   academia, not interested in contributing, students forced to use the language
+   also not inclined to get involved in helping developing the language).
+7. Hard to find any help because packages contain stupid puns containg the
+   letter R and the one letter name doesn't seem to help with searching for help
+   on google. 
+
+### Outdated packaging system
+
+1. CRAN does not provide binaries on Linux, 
+2. the entire process of submitting a package undergoes a ruman review, your
+   package needs to compile on some v old architectures like Solaris
+3. There are competing 3rd party package "marketplaces": ROpenSci, Posit Package
+   Manager, GitHub
+4. It is impossible to ensure reproducibility without resorting to half baked
+   3rd party packages (renv, groundhog) and even they can't guarantee it, so you
+   need to use Docker
+
+### Alternatives
+
+Python and C++