A Brief History of S

The S language has been in use for more than 15 years now, and this appears to be a good time to recollect some of the events and influences that marked its development. The present paper covers material on the design of S that has also been addressed by Becker and Chambers (1984b), but the emphasis here is on historical development and less on technical computing details. Also, many important new ideas have come about since that work. Similarly, parts of Chambers (1992) discuss the history of S, but there the emphasis is on very recent developments and future directions.

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