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Comment by GlennS | Hacker News Reader

I think for a significant portion of R users the jump to JavaScript is not plausible as things stand.

R is one of the few languages / platforms where people who don't give a fuck about software engineering can successfully create mostly correct computer programs with reasonable speed.

JavaScript is not ready for those people yet.

(Although I am pretty impressed with the work the Observable people are doing in this regard.)

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Do you have any advice for R users on making the transition? Even though I am primarily an R user, these days I have been using a fair amount of JS in my work, and I'm not sure how I can get to the "next level" in my programming that your alluding to. It seems like most of the tutorials are either too rudimentary or way over my head (like the three step drawing meme).

Maybe it makes sense for someone in my position to just go bite the bullet and go through the Eloquent JavaScript even though I feel like I already have a fair grasp of the content? Or learn some key principles of Software Engineering?

To be blunt, if you can seriously cope with R, javascript should be a piece of piss. R has a very, very steep learning curve... perhaps the transition is less to do with changing languages and more to do with learning principles of software engineering?

Not only is Javascript not ready for those people yet, Javascript has been moving further and further away from those people for years, both in the language spec and in the community and ecosystem around the language.

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