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| Iris versicolor By Danielle Langlois License: CC-BY-SA |
R is a language, as Luis Apiolaza pointed out in his recent post. This is absolutely true, and learning a programming language is not much different from learning a foreign language. It takes time and a lot of practice to be proficient in it. I started using R when I moved to the UK and I wonder, if I have a better understanding of English or R by now.
Languages are full of surprises, in particular for non-native speakers. The other day I learned that there is courtesy and curtsey. Both words sounded very similar to me, but of course created some laughter when I mixed them up in an email.
With languages you can get into habits of using certain words and phrases, but sometimes you see or hear something, which shakes you up again. So did the following two lines in R with me:
f <- function(x) x^2
sapply(1:10, f)
[1] 1 4 9 16 25 36 49 64 81 100
