Public Universities Should Use Open Source Software

Some powerful arguments.

Play with C++ code in Rstudio

I am not a C++ programmer but sometimes I need to play with some C++ code. On my Linux workstation, I have the complete GNU tool chain installed. I don't really want to do that on my tiny Windows ultrabook because ... well, it's tiny and I want to keep it that way.

I do have R (and the magical Rcpp package), Rtools, and Rstudio installed on my ultrabook. I just realized how trivial it is to tweak C++ code fragments using these tools together.

For example, in order to run this very simple C++ code fragment:

===========================================
#include <iostream>
using std::cout;

int main() {
for (int hashNum = 1; hashNum <= 5; hashNum++) {
cout << "#";
}
cout << "\n";
return 0;
}
===========================================

One just need to add a few lines so that the code looks like this:

===========================================
#include <Rcpp.h>

using std::cout;
using namespace Rcpp;

// [[Rcpp::export]]
int main() {
  for (int hashNum = 1; hashNum <= 5; hashNum++) {
cout << "#";
}
cout << "\n";
return 0;
}

/*** R
main()
*/

===========================================

Hit Ctrl + Enter, problem solved!

Data analysis on AWS cloud

Here is a good introduction on how to get started with data analysis on AWS cloud.

More on pandoc and markdown

This post explains how to use citation and reference in a pandoc markdown document.

Texts, a pandoc editor

I really like this Pandoc editor I bought. It is small, lightweight, and elegant. More importantly, combined with the Pandoc engine, it can handle long and complicated documents. I also like the this review. This short article also looks very interesting (and this guy is a sociologist!).

CuteMarkEd is another promising markdown editor. It is a free and open source project.

Why Java should be avoided when developing R packages

Here is a good argument.

Manjaro

Manjaro is a Linux distro based on Arch. Based on this review, it has become a real competitor of Ubuntu and Mint. I should give a try sometime.

Rstudio

By integrating R, markdown, and many other exciting new technologies, Rstudio has become a complete and fascinating data analysis environment.

Ceemple

Ceemple takes a different approach to scientific computing: it is based on C++ and integrates a large number of scientific libraries into an intuitive IDE. It is free for academic use but so far is Windows-only.