A Comparative History of Programing in Statistics and Data Science

• Activity Number: 67 - Section on Statistical Computing: Data Science
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 3, 2020 : 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM
• Sponsor: Section for Statistical Programmers and Analysts
• Author(s): Ben Barnard* and Gabriel Odom
• Companies: Wells Fargo and Florida International University
• Keywords: Python; Julia; R; history; War; Hmisc?

Abstract

R, Python,.... Julia???? which should we choose? To make things more difficult and confusing we compare the history of the languages and the decisions that have been made in their respective development. We also compare the history and development of SAS, STAT, Minitab, etc and what influence these software might have had on the development of the previous open source tools. Topics include the tidyverse and pandas movement, Hmisc?, what is the deal with Python 2.x and 3.x. Why did someone decide we needed another open source language out there... Julia I am looking at you. We hope to embrace the differences amoung the languages and avoid all out war.