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RE: st: New Resource for Using R with Stata


From   "Nick Cox" <[email protected]>
To   <[email protected]>
Subject   RE: st: New Resource for Using R with Stata
Date   Sun, 14 Oct 2007 21:18:40 +0100

The reference is to a blog maintained by Andrew Gelman. 

I've got to say I barely recognised Stata (or Mata) 
from some of the contributions to that particular thread. 
A few people didn't seem either well informed or much 
experienced in using Stata. The comment about Mata 
quoted below is one example. Another is the criticism of Mata for 
"Yet Another Haphazard Syntax". That is a pretty 
strange comment given that Mata is consciously C-like. 

I was interested to see the news that [punctuation 
and spelling edited] 

"SPSS has integrated Python as a programming language 
into its syntax. It means that you can run SPSS through 
the GUI, through its own syntax, through VBA or through 
Python. The Python extension gives you 'real' programming 
control over SPSS, which you never previously had."

It will be intriguing to see how many SPSS users 
come out and reveal themselves as frustrated Python 
programmers. 

To be fair, I must now flag that I am not well informed
or much experienced in using SPSS. 

Nick 
[email protected] 

Joseph Coveney
 
> Maarten Buis wrote (excerpted):
> 
> . . . For more on this comparison, see the comments on this post:
> http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2007/0
> 8/they_started_me.html
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------------
> 
> One of the responders to that post wrote that Mata is "Yet 
> Another Control
> Language (they're not really programming languages . . .)".
> 
> I've been under the impression since my days using BMD and 
> SPSS and later
> using BMDP and SAS that a control language governs the execution of
> procedures, as in the SAS programs that essentially invoke SAS PROCs.
> 
> In that sense, a control languages "aren't really a 
> programming languages"
> and I would on that basis assume that what I call a control 
> language is what
> that responder meant by the term, as well.
> 
> But that doesn't fit Mata at all.
> 
> Is anyone aware of another meaning of "control language" that would
> reconcile this discrepancy?

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