In article <deeqpj9av67y.dlg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Erik Funkenbusch <erik@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Kind of odd that the new york times would confuse a programming language
> with a program. They call R an "open source program", but languages, by
> definition are not programs. They are a specification that can be
> implemented, typically as both open source and closed source programs.
I believe R is one of those cases where you have a language that
essentially only has one widely used implementation (and maybe only one
implementation total). Because of that, "R" is used both to refer to
the language itself (S with significant extensions), and the the
complete system (graphical facilities, documentation system, etc).
Kind of like people use "Smalltalk" for both the language and the
development environment. Or "Mathematica" and "Maple" to refer to both
the programming languages of those two systems, respectively, and also
to the complete packages.
--
--Tim Smith
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