Thursday, March 19, 2015

Getting real useful (Dudeism edition)


Here's the scenario: you are a programmer, you know, like everybody else. You are writing your project or your task at work and you are generally happy about the state of things. And then you need some statistical work. Now, like most dudes/dudettes, you forgot the courses you took at school. Because, I mean, cmon...

HOWEVER, what you lack in respect for educational institutions you make up for with your general knowledge of the tools available. You know there is a programming language named R for exactly that type of work, with a bunch of ready to use examples and the such. Unfortunately, being the knowledgeable individual you are you know that you either write your whole thing in R or none of it.

So, you put your head down and head for stackoverflow to find a list of available libraries, most of which will be poorly documented and start the long, tedious process of learning the thing. Like you were some kind of nerd, you know? Like you were going to go for a phd in statistics or something.

And then, all of a sudden, things don't look so peachy anymore and you are one bummed out dude/dudette. All you wanted to do was:

private void calculateTheStuff(data)
{
    var result = R()
    {
         //do the amazing in R...
    }

    return result;
}

My calling in life is, as widely known, to help the dudes of the world being generally happy about the state of things. So, basically, this sample code is now possible. And by "basically" I mean, no, you cannot write full R yet. But there IS a nascent implementation of it here, It does the basic vector configuration and concatenation. It is the prettiest thing ever but needs some dudes to help out.

Now, if you are a manager reading this and wondering why would you care about those dudes. Think that studies have clearly linked the bummed-out index of your dudes to major loss in productivity, missed deadlines and the such. You know, the kind of stuff that gets you fired, so, for crying out loud...

HELP YOUR DUDES.  

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