Comparison of R and Yorick

I have used both R and Yorick extensively enough to get a reasonable feel for both languages. Here is my list of the pros and cons of each.

R

• Pros
  • Actively cross-patform
  • Developing fast
  • large group of developers
  • good system for add-on packages and linking C/Fortran code
  • Huge number of plotting and statistics features
  • HDF5 support (http://www.met.ed.ac.uk/~hcp/hdf5_1.4.7.tar.gz)
• Cons
  • Slow to execute (compared to IDL and Yorick)
  • No geographical maps
  • Image processing and display limited.
  • NetCDF support poor (only works with very old files)
• Features
  • GPL license
  • Linguistically unique (except for other S implementations), with faint aromas of lisp and Algol.

Yorick

• Pros
  • fast execution (almost as good as IDL)
  • zoomable plots
  • NetCDF support
  • A one-man effort: clear and simple design philosophy.
  • Originally for Unix/X (including MacOS X with XDarwin) but there are ports for Windows 9x/NT/2000. MacOS 8/9 version available but no longer developed.
• Cons
  • A one-man effort: development is slow.
  • No HDF5 support
  • limited range of matrix operations
• Features
  • rather old-fashioned (static) C/Fortran linking. It works OK, though.
  • Lingustically like C with array operations -- the latter are more flexible and well-thought-out than in IDL.
  • BSD-like license