R, S, T, and other programming languages not generally spoken of in polite circles

I suppose I know a thing or two about the care and feeding of a blog. After 124 posts, I know a little, anyways- this blog has been read on six continents (over 40 countries!). One of the little things I think I know is that a blog post should try to have a clever title, a "hook". The content, of course, should also be interesting, or at least relevant. I've written a few pieces which I consider absolutely golden, and then there have been a few that were just plain... meh.

Today's title, though, explodes the bounds of known civility: of the folks who visit my blog, I believe only my good e-buddy Dr. Lee Baker will have the foggiest notions of what R, S and T are about (by the way- if you DO know anything about these languages, drop a comment and I'll be happy to give you and/or your website or firm bit of free web publicity).

As for me, well... I've actually got a copy of R of one of the PCs in the Secret Underground Lair. I've done about as much with it as I have with MySQL, which is to say, not much. R is a derivative, successor, or just plain newer version of S... seriously, I'm not making this up. T, however, is the oddball in this group. As I as thinking of a topic involving programming languages, I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be an absolute hoot if there was a T programming language?" Well, be careful what you wish for- T is out there, it's pretty obscure, but it really does exist. Depending on your source, it's either an implementation of the Scheme language or Lisp.

The reason all of this is here is because I'm trying to get back into programming. I mean, part of my job title is "programmer", but what we typically do falls more into layout than anything, in most cases. And, being that the software utilized is expensive, it's out of the reach of "normal" humans, it's not just something one goes out and buys and gets good at. How expensive is it? Well, one could purchase several stand-alone copies of Adobe's CS6 for the same price as one license of what we use. So, I'm looking at a few languages that have a common characteristic, namely price. Of course, that price is FREE.

For those non-geeks out there, there is a plethora of high-quality software available- robust, well-supported and developed, and used in every sort of business, educational and scientific endeavor. R is one of these languages. I'm not sure that I'll ever use it, but it's on my radar. The language at the top of my list is Python- I hope to collaborate a bit with Mr. T in the near future on a Python project. Perl is also on my list, as well as JavaScript and Visual Basic.    

And there you have it- I'm on record and on the hook now to start working on one of these languages.

On the data front, my Access form is partially rebuilt- I hope to have that up and running soon.

That's it- it's nearly 0600 local (GMT-5)

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.


June 5, 2016 update: this was originally published on Sep 16, 2014, and is one of the 1st of what I hope to be an occasional series of blog updates- microblogs, I suppose.

Where am I at? Well, in case you missed it, the database had a catastrophic hardware failure, and it was not backed up. I'm still pretty much at "Hello, world" with Python 3, and although my analytical skill are vastly improved, my practical programming experience at work is only modestly improved.

On a sad note, Meerkat suffered her FOURTH flat in just over four years today. Fortunately, we carry one of those all-in-one emergency devices: air pump, jumper, lights and USB power supply.  I know EXACTLY where and when it happened. There is absolutely no way I can avoid the tollway construction, and it is the cause of two of the flats.

Meerkat receiving CPR (Car Pneumatic Resupply)

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.