R is a powerful programming language for statistical computing, one that has become much more widely known in the last few years. It is also a strange beast. Its roots go back to its parent language S in 1976. Since the 1970’s the language and its attendant libraries have developed exclusively for the solution of statistical problems, largely outside the mainstream of software development.
If the diagram above were to scale, the circle representing R users would be much smaller, and the sliver of overlap between R users and mainstream software developers, the integrators, would be too small to see. R is becoming more widely used, but it’s still mysterious if not entirely unknown to most software developers.
Numerous clients have asked us to help them integrate R with other programming environments because we have experience using R to solve statistical problems and have experience with the wider world of business software development. One of the keys to understanding R is to understand the mindset of a statistician, something difficult to appreciate from reading documentation alone.
We have helped companies integrate R with diverse other languages: C#, Python, Haskell, etc. And we have given presentations around the world introducing software engineers to the power and quirkiness of R.
If you’d like to discuss how we may be able to help your company with R, please call or email to discuss your project.