Talk:R (programming language)

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R (programming language) was a Engineering and technology good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

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November 4, 2010	Good article nominee	Not listed

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The article Datasets.load was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 24 September 2018 with a consensus to merge the content into R (programming language). If you find that such action has not been taken promptly, please consider assisting in the merger instead of re-nominating the article for deletion. To discuss the merger, please use this talk page.

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Too much tutorial-like

Currently this page reads more like a single-page printout of a book than an encyclopedia article. There are way too many tutorial-like examples. These should be removed in favor of a link to an R resource showing these examples. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.213.43.208 (talk) 17:22, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely agree. These examples contain a ton of off-topic information and are better suited for a textbook or other online resource. Jcschwartz3205 (talk) 05:31, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed this as well and was going to put up a poll to maybe separate the article into two: one of the language (this page) and then another focused on syntax and semantics. The second page on syntax and semantics would be like the Python analog.

That said, the former split (now just moving text) would definitely need to be edited to be focused on highlighting different syntax and semantics, and not just a tutorial of how to program in R.

Another avenue for this recently removed content could easily be moved to Wikibooks with little to no change, for example in the Computing section https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Department:Computing. Erictleung (talk) 17:26, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I restored the deleted content. The deleted content is the information I was looking for when I first came to this article to learn about R. Because it wasn't here, I bought three books on R. I then paraphrased these books and my college statistics textbook to build the examples. I'm sure I'm not the only one looking for examples to learn about R. If there is a consensus to fork these examples to another article that this article links to, then no information is lost. Timhowardriley (talk) 21:47, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I concur with Erictleung. This was a pretty clear case of WP:NOTTEXTBOOK. This might be useful to some folks, and it may well have been what you were personally looking for, but it is off-mission for an encyclopedia. I would not support forking to another article, either. MrOllie (talk) 21:51, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm the guy who added the "Basic syntax" examples. If you look at the wiki pages for PHP or C you will see they are laden with meaty code examples. It only makes sense that pages on programming languages focus on the language itself, otherwise what's the point of having the page to begin within? If anything the syntax and usage examples should be promoted on the page. The only thing I think that needs to be removed at the moment is the prominent reference to the "Tidyverse" in the Packages section, which (unlike the language usage examples) genuinely has nothing to do with the the premise this article; which is ostensibly about "R, the programming language". Raquart (talk) 00:12, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The point is to explain what the language is, not to help people learn how to program in it - that is beyond the scope of the encyclopedia, just like carpentry shouldn't give advice on how to properly hammer a nail. MrOllie (talk) 03:00, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely agree regarding the "Tidyverse"...very off-putting and unnecessary Gdefreitas (talk) 16:10, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Milestones

The table in the Milestones section show R version with format x.y, e.g. R 3.6. However, except for some of the historical releases, the formal version format is x.y.z, e.g. R 3.6.0. The dates associated with each entry appears to point to when the x.y.0 release was done. Should the 'Release' version be updated to use x.y.0 format?

Add some detail on OOP features and on closures (functions)

I added a succint explanation (with code example) of the OOP features of the language I found absent (outside the "paradigms" wikidata) but imho are an important feature of R (for instance there is a section about the "pipe operator" but none of OOP). Also added some detail in "functions", specifically the possibility of creating custom infix operators (which is rather uncommon). Rikivillalba (talk) 02:10, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Rstat" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Rstat has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 January 13 § Rstat until a consensus is reached. 1234qwer 1234qwer 4 10:37, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"RStat" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect RStat has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 January 25 § RStat until a consensus is reached. CycloneYoris ^talk! 10:23, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]