R devel - Jan 2007 - C vs. C++ as learning and development tool for R

I have 3 years of experience with R and have an interest in becoming a
better programmer so that I might someday be able to contribute
packages. Other than R, my only experience was taking Lisp from Daniel
Friedman in the 1970's. I would like to learn either C or C++ for
several reasons:

To gain a better concept of object oriented programming so that I can
begin to use S4 methods in R.

To perhaps speed up some things I do repeatedly in R

To be able to contribute a package someday.

 

I have been doing some reading and from what I can tell R is more
compatible with C, but C++ has much greater capabilities for OO
programming.

 

I have just started reading The C++ Programming Language: Special
Edition by Bjarne Stroustrup
<http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?ATH=Bjarne+Stro
ustrup&z=y> , he recommends first learning C++ and then then C if
necessary, but as a developer of C++, he is probably biased.

 

I would greatly appreciate the advice of the R developers and package
contributors on this subject. "C" or "C++"?

 

Thanks,

 

Mark

 

Mark W. Kimpel MD 

 

 

Official Business Address:

 

Department of Psychiatry

Indiana University School of Medicine

PR M116

Institute of Psychiatric Research

791 Union Drive

Indianapolis, IN 46202

 

Preferred Mailing Address:

 

15032 Hunter Court

Westfield, IN  46074

 

(317) 490-5129 Work, & Mobile

 

(317) 663-0513 Home (no voice mail please)

1-(317)-536-2730 FAX


	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

On 1/19/2007 3:55 AM, Kimpel, Mark William wrote:
> I have 3 years of experience with R and have an interest in becoming a
> better programmer so that I might someday be able to contribute
> packages. Other than R, my only experience was taking Lisp from Daniel
> Friedman in the 1970's. I would like to learn either C or C++ for
> several reasons:
> 
> To gain a better concept of object oriented programming so that I can
> begin to use S4 methods in R.
> 
> To perhaps speed up some things I do repeatedly in R
> 
> To be able to contribute a package someday.
> 
>  
> 
> I have been doing some reading and from what I can tell R is more
> compatible with C, but C++ has much greater capabilities for OO
> programming.
> 
>  
> 
> I have just started reading The C++ Programming Language: Special
> Edition by Bjarne Stroustrup
> <http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?ATH=Bjarne+Stro
> ustrup&z=y> , he recommends first learning C++ and then then C if
> necessary, but as a developer of C++, he is probably biased.
> 
>  
> 
> I would greatly appreciate the advice of the R developers and package
> contributors on this subject. "C" or "C++"?
For your purposes, I would recommend C.  Most example code you'll find 
is written in C, so it's easier to learn by looking at simple examples 
written by others.  The R external interface was designed with C in 
mind, so you need to tell C++ to act like C to use it.

Regarding OOP, I think the C++ style of OOP is so different from S4 that 
it would not actually be helpful in learning S4.  As far as I know, none 
of the languages that are easy to link to R use the same style of OOP.

On the other hand, taking a disciplined approach to C programming is a 
good idea (which is I think what Stroustrup had in mind).  I'd suggest 
an object oriented Pascal (e.g. Delphi) or Java if that's what you want, 
  because they are simpler than C++.  C and R are very permissive 
languages, and if you take advantage of that you can write amazingly 
sloppy and unmaintainable code.

Duncan Murdoch

You don't necessarily need to know C or C++ to write an R package.
Many (maybe most) R packages only use R.

On 1/19/07, Kimpel, Mark William <mkimpel at iupui.edu>
wrote:
> I have 3 years of experience with R and have an interest in becoming a
> better programmer so that I might someday be able to contribute
> packages. Other than R, my only experience was taking Lisp from Daniel
> Friedman in the 1970's. I would like to learn either C or C++ for
> several reasons:
>
> To gain a better concept of object oriented programming so that I can
> begin to use S4 methods in R.
>
> To perhaps speed up some things I do repeatedly in R
>
> To be able to contribute a package someday.
>
>
>
> I have been doing some reading and from what I can tell R is more
> compatible with C, but C++ has much greater capabilities for OO
> programming.
>
>
>
> I have just started reading The C++ Programming Language: Special
> Edition by Bjarne Stroustrup
> <http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?ATH=Bjarne+Stro
> ustrup&z=y> , he recommends first learning C++ and then then C if
> necessary, but as a developer of C++, he is probably biased.
>
>
>
> I would greatly appreciate the advice of the R developers and package
> contributors on this subject. "C" or "C++"?
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
> Mark
>
>
>
> Mark W. Kimpel MD
>
>
>
>
>
> Official Business Address:
>
>
>
> Department of Psychiatry
>
> Indiana University School of Medicine
>
> PR M116
>
> Institute of Psychiatric Research
>
> 791 Union Drive
>
> Indianapolis, IN 46202
>
>
>
> Preferred Mailing Address:
>
>
>
> 15032 Hunter Court
>
> Westfield, IN  46074
>
>
>
> (317) 490-5129 Work, & Mobile
>
>
>
> (317) 663-0513 Home (no voice mail please)
>
> 1-(317)-536-2730 FAX
>
>
>        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>

Dear Mark,

On Friday 19 January 2007 09:55, Kimpel, Mark William
wrote:
> I have 3 years of experience with R and have an interest in becoming a
> better programmer so that I might someday be able to contribute
> packages. Other than R, my only experience was taking Lisp from Daniel
> Friedman in the 1970's. I would like to learn either C or C++ for
> several reasons:
>
> To gain a better concept of object oriented programming so that I can
> begin to use S4 methods in R.
>
I do not think C++ is the best idea if you are learning it to understand the 
OOP of R. The OOP of R is probably closer to that of CLOS (the common lisp 
object system) than C++ and Java.

It might be better to directly go ahead and look for documentation specificaly 
about R's OOP.
> To perhaps speed up some things I do repeatedly in R
>
> To be able to contribute a package someday.
>
>
>
> I have been doing some reading and from what I can tell R is more
> compatible with C, but C++ has much greater capabilities for OO
> programming.
>
>
>
> I have just started reading The C++ Programming Language: Special
> Edition by Bjarne Stroustrup
> <http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?ATH=Bjarne+Stro
> ustrup&z=y> , he recommends first learning C++ and then then C if
> necessary, but as a developer of C++, he is probably biased.
>
>
>
> I would greatly appreciate the advice of the R developers and package
> contributors on this subject. "C" or "C++"?
>
>
I'd recommend C instead of C++: C++ is a huge language and it is somewhat 
easier to interface C than C++ from R. (In "non-R" stuff I prefer to
use C++
better than C, even if just as in "C++as a better C", but this
probably is
not a reasonable reason to learn C++).  

HTH,

R.


>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
> Mark
>
>
>
> Mark W. Kimpel MD
>
>
>
>
>
> Official Business Address:
>
>
>
> Department of Psychiatry
>
> Indiana University School of Medicine
>
> PR M116
>
> Institute of Psychiatric Research
>
> 791 Union Drive
>
> Indianapolis, IN 46202
>
>
>
> Preferred Mailing Address:
>
>
>
> 15032 Hunter Court
>
> Westfield, IN  46074
>
>
>
> (317) 490-5129 Work, & Mobile
>
>
>
> (317) 663-0513 Home (no voice mail please)
>
> 1-(317)-536-2730 FAX
>
>
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
-- 
Ram?n D?az-Uriarte
Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncol?gicas (CNIO)
(Spanish National Cancer Center)
Melchor Fern?ndez Almagro, 3
28029 Madrid (Spain)
Fax: +-34-91-224-6972
Phone: +-34-91-224-6900

http://ligarto.org/rdiaz
PGP KeyID: 0xE89B3462
(http://ligarto.org/rdiaz/0xE89B3462.asc)



**NOTA DE CONFIDENCIALIDAD** Este correo electr?nico, y en s...{{dropped}}

Kimpel, Mark William wrote:
> I have 3 years of experience with R and have an interest in becoming a
> better programmer so that I might someday be able to contribute
> packages. Other than R, my only experience was taking Lisp from Daniel
> Friedman in the 1970's. I would like to learn either C or C++ for
> several reasons:
>
> To gain a better concept of object oriented programming so that I can
> begin to use S4 methods in R.
>
> To perhaps speed up some things I do repeatedly in R
>
> To be able to contribute a package someday.
>   
If you decide to use C++ with R you should check out the documentation
that comes with the package RcppTemplate, and the sample code that
comes with that package. In my experience C++ (or C or FORTRAN) is
needed for many compute intensive tasks, and the R framework provides
a nice front-end with its extensive collection of visualization and
statistical analysis tools.

Disclaimer: I have no experience with S4.

ds

On Fri, Jan 19, 2007 at 03:55:30AM -0500, Kimpel, Mark William
wrote:
> I have 3 years of experience with R and have an interest in becoming a
> better programmer so that I might someday be able to contribute
> packages. Other than R, my only experience was taking Lisp from Daniel
> Friedman in the 1970's. I would like to learn either C or C++ for
> several reasons:
> 
> To gain a better concept of object oriented programming so that I can
> begin to use S4 methods in R.
> 
> To perhaps speed up some things I do repeatedly in R
> 
> To be able to contribute a package someday.
> 
>  
> 
> I have been doing some reading and from what I can tell R is more
> compatible with C, but C++ has much greater capabilities for OO
> programming.
> 
>  
> 
> I have just started reading The C++ Programming Language: Special
> Edition by Bjarne Stroustrup
> <http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?ATH=Bjarne+Stro
> ustrup&z=y> , he recommends first learning C++ and then then C if
> necessary, but as a developer of C++, he is probably biased.
> 
>  
> 
> I would greatly appreciate the advice of the R developers and package
> contributors on this subject. "C" or "C++"?
> 
To echo several other comments, if your goal is to work in R, it would
be best to go straight to R.  I haven't used lisp much, but I believe
it is much closer to R than most other languages you could pick.  It
has a functional style, and I recall reading the R's scoping rules
were directly inspired by Scheme, a Lisp variant.  In fact, I didn't
feel I fully grasped them until I looked at Abelson and Sussman's
"Structure and Interpretation of Computer Languages" (which uses
Scheme).

The "functional" OO of R is significantly different from the
"class-based" OO found in most languages calling themselves object
oriented, including C++, Java, Python and smalltalk.  Learning those
other languages to understand R could actually interfere with learning
R.

If and when you need speed, you can program in any language that
supports Fortran or C interfaces, which is almost all of them.

If you're just doing general education....

I use C++ in R, and I have to say that programming in C++ is a
wretched experience.  You have to make a major committment to learning
the language, which is a minefield of gotcha's, to use it in full OO
style.  As others on this list and Stroustrup suggest, you can use it
and just incrementally add features over what you would do in C.  It
can also be speedy and powerful (to run, not to program in!), which is
why I'm using it.

For pure OO, I think you can't beat smalltalk, which is freely
available at www.squeak.org (also there is a GNU and several
commerical versions).  The language rules and syntax fit on one page.
The catch is that to use it you need to learn the environment and the
class library; these too are big tasks.

Objective-C is a much more lightweight C'ish OO than C++ (the author
moved smalltalk concepts into C).  It's available as part of the GNU
compilers.  Unlike smalltalk, you might use it if you cared about
performance, and it's the native language of Mac OS-X.  It has a
relatively small learning curve.

Python and Java are other choices for OO, both significantly simpler
than C++.  I find Python to be simple and elegant; it's also nifty for
scripting random tasks.  Java's widely used on the web and in the
enterprise.  Eiffel is also interesting.

I can't say much about "libraries already on other machines", but
the
C runtime is probably the one you can count on being there the most.

Of course, another route would be to explore other functional
languages, a terrain I barely know: Haskell, ML, OCaml...  In
particular, some of them have lazy evaluation of arguments, which R
also employs.  And there are the functional/object languages like CLOS
(I think the O in OCaml is Object).

Anyway, this risks becoming a general language thread.  My main point,
as someone who's been there, is don't use C++ unless you have a
compelling reason and a lot of time!

Ross Boylan

(Among the languages listed, the ones I've used extensively are C,
C++, Objective-C, Python, R, and smalltalk.)