This is such a bizarre post. The reason why people use a language like R is because it is easy to learn and use (and install, via RStudio) for data analysis without having to be a well-trained programmer. I can’t recall ever hearing from anyone who has relied on R, doing so because it was computationally efficient. The point of the language is convenience — particularly with how easy it is to create attractive graphics using ggplot2’a defaults.
It’s a testament to the R library’s developers (particularly Hadley Wickhan) for making APIs that do so well in streamlining data work. But I’m willing to bet a majority of R users, particularly in academia, could not load a simple delimited data file without a high-level call such as read.csv.
(By “simple”, I mean a delimited text file that could be parsed with regex or even split. I don’t expect the average person to be able to write a parser that dealt with CSV’s actual complexity)
It’s a testament to the R library’s developers (particularly Hadley Wickhan) for making APIs that do so well in streamlining data work. But I’m willing to bet a majority of R users, particularly in academia, could not load a simple delimited data file without a high-level call such as read.csv.
(By “simple”, I mean a delimited text file that could be parsed with regex or even split. I don’t expect the average person to be able to write a parser that dealt with CSV’s actual complexity)