Re: st: simply start over and build something better

["Joseph Coveney" <jcoveney@bigplanet.com>]

Stas Kolenikov wrote:

Came randomly across a blog entry on R:
http://xianblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/simply-start-over-and-build-something-b
etter/

I wonder if Stata Corp. starts over and builds something better from
time to time. The two major rearrangements of the code that I am aware
of are the move towards Mata overt the last five or so years, and code
multi-threading for MP flavors. Stata does not seem to suffer from the
problems discussed in the above blog entry: the scope of everything is
well defined in both Stata and Mata, and Mata calls by reference
rather than by value (while Stata only deals with the data in memory
plus a small assortment of locals... at least insofar you don't touch
classes).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The switch to the new graphics in Release 8 is about the closest thing to a 
start-over-and-build-something-better event that I can recall.  

Introduction of Mata seems more incremental.  I'm sure that there are resource 
constraints at play, too, but its seems primarily that StataCorp wants to take 
its time with the development of Mata in order to make sure that they get it 
right.  About the only thing that I hope StataCorp will do in the near term is 
to add two words to help m2_reswords: "interface" and "implements".

Joseph Coveney

P.S. I really like the new factor variables.  Brilliant.  I just wish that 
StataCorp would provide more coaching about how users can implement them in 
user-written modules.


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