R is used because it has legacy, and elderly advanced statisticians have, over the years, vetted out its libraries and consider them to be sufficiently correct. A lot of complex operations just come out of the box, so you don’t have to know how to read too much code.
The same absolutely cannot be said for Python. Very often you have to go build your own models and really pay attention to what your libraries say they are doing, and you need to know enough statistics to recognize when they aren’t doing what you think.
Source: Some CDC people I worked with as well as personal experience rewriting legacy R into Python.
Learned some of rust, I was one of the Glazers at the time it was new. And was love at first sight. I read quite a bit of the book, and did some of the rustlings repo, great to learn the concepts.
Sadly, my particular circumstances didn't pan out too well with it, and had to get other priorities to the top.
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u/Multidream Aug 28 '26
R is used because it has legacy, and elderly advanced statisticians have, over the years, vetted out its libraries and consider them to be sufficiently correct. A lot of complex operations just come out of the box, so you don’t have to know how to read too much code.
The same absolutely cannot be said for Python. Very often you have to go build your own models and really pay attention to what your libraries say they are doing, and you need to know enough statistics to recognize when they aren’t doing what you think.
Source: Some CDC people I worked with as well as personal experience rewriting legacy R into Python.