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Tag: code

Swimming in a sea of code

If you are looking for code here, move on. > In the beginning, there was only the relentless blinking of the cursor. With the maddening regularity of waves splashing on the shore: blink, blink, blink, blink…Beyond the cursor, the white wasteland of the empty page: vast, featureless, and terrifying as the sea. You stare at the empty page and primordial fear engulfs you: you are never gonna venture into this wasteland, you are never gonna leave the stable, solid, familiar world of menus and shortcuts, icons and buttons. And then you take the first cautious steps. print ‘Hello world’ > Hello world, the sea obliges. 1+1 > 2 2+2 > 4 You are still scared, but your curiosity is aroused. The playful responsiveness of the sea is tempting, and quickly becomes irresistible. Soon, you are jumpting around like a child, rolling upside-down and around and around: > a=2 > b=3 > a+b 5 > for (x in 1:60) print (x) 1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9   10   11   12   13   14  15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26  27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38  39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50  51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60 The sense of freedom is exhilarating. You take a deep breath and dive: > for (i in 1:10) ifelse (i>5, print (‘ha’), print (‘ho’)) [1] “ho” [1] “ho” [1] “ho” [1]…