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On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Roger Mason<rmason@×××.ca> wrote: |
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> Mark, |
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> |
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> Mark Knecht <markknecht@×××××.com> writes: |
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> |
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>> So the main question is what sort of language (and possibly |
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>> programming environment) should a complete novice look at to get his |
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>> feet wet with GUI programming. I'd like something fairly light - |
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>> performance probably won't be a huge problem - that I could run under |
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>> Cygwin or maybe compile to run native in Windows should that ever |
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>> become useful. For now it's probably a relatively simple Linux app |
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>> that I'd likely run once a week on Saturday morning on 15 to 20 |
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>> databases I collect on Friday night. |
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> |
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> One possibility is R (http://www.r-project.org/). It has very good |
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> graphing facilities, can access various database engines, is |
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> multi-platform and unless you process immense quantities of data, should |
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> be fast enough. There may be people on the R mailing list doing the |
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> kind of thing that you want and there may be an add-on package that |
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> matches your needs (there are hundreds of add-ons). Lightweight? No, |
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> but you don't need to learn all of it, just the bits relevant to your |
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> usage. R is in portage. |
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> |
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> Another possibility is Root (http://root.cern.ch/drupal/) but it |
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> requires you to program in C++ (but there are Python and Ruby bindings) |
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> and is probably a steeper curve to ascend than R. However, Root is |
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> capable of processing huge amounts of data quickly -- that is what it |
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> was designed for. Anything you can do in R you can do in Root, but you |
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> will write more of the application yourself rather than using canned |
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> routines. I have seen messages on the Root mailing list from people |
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> working with fiscal data. Root is not lightweight, but is _is_ very |
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> powerful. Root is in portage. |
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> |
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> I'm sure there are other very capable systems out there, these are two |
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> that I use (or have used). |
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> |
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> Cheers, |
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> Roger |
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> |
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> |
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Actually, I have R on one machine now. I haven't done much with it. |
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There's a good Google University YouTube statistics course you can |
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take online for free - was taught at Google, recorded an put on you |
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Tube, on data mining that uses R. I went through about 4 hours of that |
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but got distracted by life and didn't finish it. |
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|
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R might be a good solution in that I could play on Linux but always be |
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able to go to windows if the need arose. |
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|
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Thanks, |
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Mark |