R is much more functional then most people give it credit.
From Saint Hadley
> R, at its heart, is a functional programming (FP) language. This means that it provides many tools for the creation and manipulation of functions. In particular, R has what’s known as first class functions. You can do anything with functions that you can do with vectors: you can assign them to variables, store them in lists, pass them as arguments to other functions, create them inside functions, and even return them as the result of a function. http://adv-r.had.co.nz/Functional-programming.html
It isn't a pure functional language which is really only available in Academics and Haskell has nomads to get things out which is arguably not pure.
Learning Racket helped me to use the Scheme parts found in R. It really is a little mind blowing. R was mostly used by people with little computer skills and was used with a imperative mindset but when you use it more functional R really shines.
From 2009 mail list of R on the similarities and differences between R and Lisp
https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2008-December/181982.h...
R is much more functional then most people give it credit.
From Saint Hadley
> R, at its heart, is a functional programming (FP) language. This means that it provides many tools for the creation and manipulation of functions. In particular, R has what’s known as first class functions. You can do anything with functions that you can do with vectors: you can assign them to variables, store them in lists, pass them as arguments to other functions, create them inside functions, and even return them as the result of a function. http://adv-r.had.co.nz/Functional-programming.html
It isn't a pure functional language which is really only available in Academics and Haskell has nomads to get things out which is arguably not pure.
Learning Racket helped me to use the Scheme parts found in R. It really is a little mind blowing. R was mostly used by people with little computer skills and was used with a imperative mindset but when you use it more functional R really shines.