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This seems to be a very fun language to write in, in the same way optimizing assembly code in the ancient times was fun; the age of skilled artisans. Unfortunately (for programmers - great for the rest) now is the time of a factory worker. Due to that, I don't think this language and its platform has a long future.

Its continued survival is rather a testament to excellency of marketing (as evidenced by this article!) rather than actual merits.

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I think the opposite :) - marketing of R is light years ahead. Language is very obscure, but so good that from time to time you're going to hear wonderful stories from new enlightened.

And with the rise of parallel programming we're going to actually switch more to more vector way of describing and solving problems. Just like Lisp ideas are spreading everywhere in modern languages, APL ideas are also fruitful.

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