What Exactly Is R Programming Language?

Kavita Verma
SiteSonic
Published in
5 min readJul 2, 2019

The most challenging aspect of developing is staying up to date with the upcoming trends. Not a single day passes when you will not see a development in the codes, languages or development kit.

However, the most drastic change that you will see in developing is the rise of an entirely new language. The new language open gates to new possibilities, add flexibility, features and a lot of other stuff that a programmer has to learn.

One of such change arose with the rise of R programming language in 1993 when Ross Ihaka and Robert gentleman introduced the R language. This programming language revolutionized the whole world for the developer and provided them with a better interface for creating software.

But, what is R and why it is creating such a massive wave in the development world? Let’s have a look:

What Is R Programming?

R is a well-defined and effective programming language which comes with conditional, loops and many more user-defined recursive functions along with input/output facilities. The language offers excellent statistical and graphical properties along with full support for machine learning, time series, linear regression, statistical inferences, and more.

Akram Artoul, CEO of SiteSonic, stated that R has excellent data handling and storage capacity too. He said that R could offer the analysts with is a clear and accessible collection of libraries with exclusive options for data science. It can also provide them a wide range of tools that helps to capture the right model for their data.

In simple words, R is the most resourceful assets for people dealing with a massive amount of data and want to organize it in a more understandable or visualized form.

How Is It Different From Other Languages?

R is a language for attaining perfection and highly visualized results for improved data analysis or calculation. It offers very distinct features which are more focused and beneficial than any other programming language.

The following are the characteristic difference between R and some commonly preferred programming languages.

R Vs. C

· R programming language is a loosely typed computer language which makes it much more flexible than the C language.

· Unlike C language, the library files of R are not entirely R language based. A considerable amount of files use C, Fortran and other as the base language.

· R is a GNU package which is useful for data miners, data analyst, statisticians whereas C is a high-level general purpose language which is a preferable choice for firmware or portable applications.

· Akram Artoul reveals that the most significant difference in the two languages is that C is compiled type while R is an interpreted language.

R Vs. Python

· Python may support data analysis, but you need to install external packages like Pandas, PyPi for it whereas R language comes with inbuilt packages and doesn’t require any exterior plug-in for data analysis.

· Data visualization is the primary focus of the R language, but Python is more of a deep learning language. So, visualization works are much more natural and straight forward in R language than in Python.

· Python relies on packages for machine learning data analysis, so you cannot depend on it for achieving specialization. On the other hand, R has hundreds of packages which allow it to perform everything with user-required perfection.

Real World Application of R

R was created on the top of S language with one prime aim, to create better and powerful tools for learning programming while playing with data.

However, in recent years R has become a significant part of the world for a lot of works. Some of its main applications in real-world are as following:

· Machine Learning

R language has an inbuilt set of exceedingly advanced packages which can help you to perform linear/non-linear regression, decision trees, linear/non-linear regression, and many more tasks with minimal effort. These features of R make it perfect for predictive analytics, which is the prime need of Machine Learning programs.

· Statistical Computing

R comes with over 9100 packages which offer every possible operation that a statistician will ever need. The programming language is also a considerable choice due to its rich package repository and expressive syntax. Even a person with no background in computer science can easily import, clean, and analyze data using R.

Further, R also offers exclusive charting capabilities which facilitate you in plotting data in visual form.

· Data Science

With the development in IoT, the volume of data generated per day has seen a drastic rise. The devices are creating terabytes of data for improving their decision-making, and this data need an expert solution that can handle it. R programming is precisely focusing on this particular section of the online world.

According to the experts like Akram Artoul, R is the only language which can grant a data scientist with the power to collect real-time data, perform statistical, predict analysis, creates visualizations and communicate actionable results to stakeholder.

Why Should You Learn R Programming Language?

The expressive and easy to use syntax along with the flexible interface makes R language a common choice for numerous amounts of works. The language has become an active part of many large firms and has opened gates for new opportunities of a lot of developers.

Here’s why you should consider adding R programming to your skill list.

· Its Open Source

The creator of R has classified it under GNU or the General Public License. Even the packages and library of this language are under the free license. You can download and use them for any programming work without worrying about any law violation. In fact, you are free to use the language even for commercial jobs without any problem.

· High Compatibility

Akram Artoul and team revealed that one of the most crucial problems with programming languages is the lack of cross-platform interoperability. It increases the work input of the developers and increases the overall complexity of the development process.

However, the R language has no such restriction. This programming language is compatible with all major platforms and allows easy portability of programs without any issues.

· Rising Scope

The world is moving toward technologies like IoT and machine learning technology, which means there is a huge need for data processing. This need has opened an enormous demand for professional data analyst and data analysis software developer around the globe.

Even companies like Ford, twitter, Microsoft are turning toward R programming language. So, in coming times, the programmer with R language on their resume have a lot better chances for growth than the ones without it.

Summarizing

In recent years, R languages have grown to be one of the most preferred languages for analytical purposes. It has presented resources and tools that are far advanced than any other programming language. They are simple, straightforward, and reliable.

SiteSonic CEO Akram Artoul believes that R is the most valuable of creating future-ready designs and programs for IoT and AI technology.

His team of experts can help you to attain the knowledge of the language and present you the most advanced resource for mastering it. You can trust them for providing codes, frameworks, design, and all the other aspects of developing.

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Kavita Verma
SiteSonic

Kavita's world revolves around highly technical sphere! She loves to keep a tab on what's happening in the world of technology.