I realized earlier this year (2007) that it was in 1987 that I first started using an early version of S (it was ported to VMS and was called success). That means that I have been using some variant of S (to various degrees) for over 20 years now (I don't feel that old). Since things are a bit slow this time of year I thought I would take a few minutes and reminisce on some of the changes I have observed since I first encountered that early version. Some of the newer users may enjoy seeing how much things have improved and maybe some of the other more experienced users would like to chime in with their observations. We would access that old version using dumb terminals (the computer that actually did the work was down the hall in a locked air-conditioned room (and it took up a good chunk of the room)). We did graphics using essentially ASCII art. There was not a default graphics driver in those days and we would specify the "printer()" driver, then do the graphics commands, then use the "show()" command to actually print out the graph (with '*' for points and - for the x axis, | for the y axis and + for tick marks), we thought it was pretty impressive at the time that the computer would do that for us. Later I learned that our terminals could understand both vt100 and tek4010 protocols so we would do all the typing and textual output in vt100 mode, then switch to tek for the graphs, having actual lines made the graphs look a lot better, but it was a lot slower, you could see each point added to the graph. And if you forgot to switch back to text mode, then you next output would be plotted (1 character at a time) over the top of the graph. In order to get color graphs or other high quality graphs we had to send the plots to the old hp pen plotter which had a mechanical arm that would pick up the pens and move them around the paper (fun to watch, but slow, very slow on curves). That is where the origin of using color numbers came from, color 1 matched with whichever pen was in slot #1, color 2 with slot 2, ... And the computer did not know which color was which (we tried to keep black in position 1, but someone could always change that). If you wanted to use colors 5-8 then it would stop and beep, then you would change the pens to the other set of colors. A line width of 2 meant drawing the line 2 times, etc. And there were no filled rectangles, only density and angle of hash lines in them (if the density was high enough it would look like a fill, but it would use up the pens to fast and make you unpopular). The current 600+ colors in R are a luxury now. I remember before I learned about attaching to the search list (I don't know if it was because attaching was not mature yet, or I just had not learned it) we would name our objects using a pattern like: proj1.x, proj1.y, proj2.x, proj2.y, ... where proj1 and proj2 were identifiers for the projects (what I would name a data frame now) then there was a prefix function that you could set proj1 as a prefix and just type x and it would use proj1.x. Attaching was a huge jump forward, and the 'with' command is pure luxury in comparison (I just need to remember to appreciate little things like that more). It is amazing how much the S language (S-plus and R) have changed/improved in the last 20 years. Thanks to all the great people who have contributed and thanks for letting me wax nostalgic for a bit. -- Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D. Statistical Data Center Intermountain Healthcare greg.snow at imail.org (801) 408-8111
On Dec 26, 2007, at 2:05 PM, Greg Snow wrote:> > I realized earlier this year (2007) that it was in 1987 that I first > started using an early version of S (it was ported to VMS and was > called > success). That means that I have been using some variant of S (to > various degrees) for over 20 years now (I don't feel that old). >Boxing day somehow seems appropriate for this thread. R.I.P. to all those old boxes of yesteryore and the software that ran on them -- and yet there is always a residual archaeological curiosity. I discovered recently that the MIT athena network contains a circa 1989 version of S: http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/athena/astaff/project/Sdev/S/ which made me wonder whether there was any likelihood that one could recreate "S Thu Dec 7 16:49:47 EST 1989". Curiosity is one thing, time to dig through the layers of ancient civilizations is quite another. But if anyone would like to offer a (preferably educated) guess about the feasibility of such a project, like I said, I would be curious. url: www.econ.uiuc.edu/~roger Roger Koenker email rkoenker at uiuc.edu Department of Economics vox: 217-333-4558 University of Illinois fax: 217-244-6678 Champaign, IL 61820
My first exposure to S was on an AT&T 3B2 (a 3B2/100, I think), at the Auckland (Mt Albert) Applied Mathematics Division Station of the NZ Dept of Scientific and Industrial Research. The AMD Head Office in Wellington had one also. There may have been one or more others; I cannot remember. This would have been in 1983, maybe. It was a superbly engineered machine, but the sofware (System V, version 3.2) had its problems. If you back deleted too far along the command line, something unpleasant (losing the line? or worse?) happened. On typing 1+1 at the S command line, it took a second to get an answer. John Maindonald email: john.maindonald at anu.edu.au phone : +61 2 (6125)3473 fax : +61 2(6125)5549 Centre for Mathematics & Its Applications, Room 1194, John Dedman Mathematical Sciences Building (Building 27) Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200. On 27 Dec 2007, at 10:00 PM, r-help-request at r-project.org wrote:> From: roger koenker <roger at ysidro.econ.uiuc.edu> > Date: 27 December 2007 9:56:45 AM > To: Greg Snow <Greg.Snow at imail.org> > Cc: R-help list <R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch> > Subject: Re: [R] Reminiscing on 20 years using S > > On Dec 26, 2007, at 2:05 PM, Greg Snow wrote: > >> I realized earlier this year (2007) that it was in 1987 that I first >> started using an early version of S (it was ported to VMS and was >> called >> success). That means that I have been using some variant of S (to >> various degrees) for over 20 years now (I don't feel that old). > > Boxing day somehow seems appropriate for this thread. R.I.P. to all > those old boxes > of yesteryore and the software that ran on them -- and yet there is > always a residual archaeological curiosity. > > I discovered recently that the MIT athena network contains a circa > 1989 version > of S: http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/athena/astaff/project/Sdev/S/ which > made me wonder > whether there was any likelihood that one could recreate "S Thu Dec > 7 16:49:47 EST 1989". > Curiosity is one thing, time to dig through the layers of ancient > civilizations is quite another. > But if anyone would like to offer a (preferably educated) guess > about the feasibility of such a project, like I said, I would be > curious. > > > url: www.econ.uiuc.edu/~roger Roger Koenker > email rkoenker at uiuc.edu Department of > Economics > vox: 217-333-4558 University of Illinois > fax: 217-244-6678 Champaign, IL 61820