What is S language?

S is a statistical programming language developed primarily by John Chambers and Rick Becker and Allan Wilks of Bell Laboratories. The aim of the language, as expressed by John Chambers, is "to turn ideas into software, quickly and faithfully".

S is a descendant of the programming language Lisp, and it shares many of Lisp's features, such as its use of S-expressions to represent data and code. S is also a functional programming language, which means that it emphasizes the use of functions to manipulate data.

S is a powerful language for statistical computing, and it is used by statisticians, data miners, and other researchers for a wide variety of tasks, including data analysis, statistical modeling, and data visualization.

S is not a widely used language outside of the statistical community. However, it has been very influential, and it has inspired the development of other statistical programming languages, such as R.

Key features

• It is a functional programming language.
• It uses S-expressions to represent data and code.
• It is a powerful language for statistical computing.
• It is not a widely used language outside of the statistical community.

History

• 1975-1976: John Chambers and Rick Becker develop the first version of S at Bell Laboratories.
• 1980: S is released to the public as free software.
• 1988: Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman create R, a free software implementation of S.
• 1993: Bell Labs gives StatSci (now Insightful Corp.) an exclusive license to develop and sell the S language.
• 1998: S wins the Association for Computing Machinery’s Software System Award.
• 2004: Insightful purchases the S language from Lucent for $2 million and is the current owner.
• 2006: Alcatel purchases Lucent Technologies and is now called Alcatel-Lucent.
• 2008: Insightful is acquired by TIBCO for $25 million
• 2015: TIBCO announces that it will discontinue development of S-PLUS.

The fundamentals of the S language itself has not changed dramatically since 1998. However, there have been a number of improvements and extensions made to R, making it a more powerful and versatile language.

Today, R is the most widely used statistical programming language in the world. It is used by statisticians, data miners, and other researchers for a wide variety of tasks, including data analysis, statistical modeling, and data visualization.

S Philosophy

John Chambers and Rick Becker designed the S language with a philosophy of making it easy for users to get started, even if they had no prior programming experience. They wanted users to be able to focus on their data and analysis, and not on the programming language itself.

To achieve this goal, S was designed to be an interactive language. This means that users can type commands and see the results immediately. This is in contrast to traditional programming languages, where users must write a program and then run it to see the results.

S was also designed to be a functional programming language. This means that it emphasizes the use of functions to manipulate data. Functions are a powerful way to organize code and make it reusable.

The S philosophy has been very successful. S is now one of the most widely used statistical programming languages in the world. It is used by statisticians, data miners, and other researchers for a wide variety of tasks, including data analysis, statistical modeling, and data visualization.

Key features

• Interactive environment
• Functional programming language
• Wide range of statistical and graphical functions
• Active and growing community