It started as a simple exchange on Mastodon. Apparently, what is natural for my nix-infused brain may seem far-fetched for non-nixers. Multiple versions of the same package must be possible. But I actually tried this only once, so I decided to document it.
Just
install.packages(), he said.
It’s easy, he said.
(Unknown R tutor)
CRAN has spoiled us. Most of the time, it’s a breeze to add new packages to our environment. Just issue the command, and the package becomes available. If you’re an RStudio user, you can simply start typing the package name select it from a list and it’s done. This is because R and CRAN work together to handle your package’s R dependencies: other packages that are needed for the functioning of the package you actually want to use.
A monad is mysterious entity from the ivory towers of category theory, an idea that turned out to be quite useful in programming. Part of the myth surrounding monads is that as soon as you understand them, you lose the ability to explain the concept. Since I’m not a mathematician, not even a trained programmer, I won’t even try to explain anything. Instead, I just implement a simple monad.
R, being a functional programming language should be able to benefit from this concept. The goal is not to create a library, just to demonstrate monads, and gain a practical understanding of its usefulness.