SHF: PROJECT DARWIN_ Towards Principled Language Evolution

R是一个大型语言生态系统，由统计和图形功能、编程语言以及开放源码编程环境中的所有其他构件组成。R在学术界被数以百万计的科学/工程程序员使用，并在商业和工业中大量使用。R正在达到极限，如果它要跟上和推进科学的步伐，就需要进行重大翻新。该提案提议对R语言的几个方面进行现代化改造，并纳入新的基础设施要素。现代化工作的重点将是语言执行的代码基、编译器和存储子系统。新特性将围绕类型注释的添加展开，以提高R程序的正确性和性能，并有助于分布式执行。PI与R核心开发人员建立了良好的联系，并且有一条将版本发布到生产中的明确途径。这些改进将有助于R支持科学的步伐，因为问题在计算上变得更加复杂，并使用快速增长的数据集。用R编写的科学计算将运行得更快，能够处理更大的分布式数据集，而且通过对语言进行现代化处理，实现将更容易维护。重新实现像R这样的实时、全面的语言的经历将会引起编程语言研究社区的兴趣，并为科学/工程编程提供更可持续的基础设施。

R is a large language ecosystem consisting of statistical and graphical capabilities, a programming language, and all the other artifacts present in an open source programming environment. R is used by millions of scientific/engineering programmers in academia and is used heavily in business and industry. R is hitting limits and needs major renovations if it is to keep up with, and advance, the pace of science. This proposal proposes to modernize several aspects of the R language and to integrate new infrastructure elements. The modernization effort will focus on the code base of the language implementation, the compiler and the memory subsystem. The new features will center around the addition of type annotations to improve correctness and performance of R programs as well as to assist with distributed execution. The PI is well-connected to the R core developers, and there is a clear path to releasing versions into production. The enhancements will help R support the pace of science, as problems become more computationally complex and use rapidly growing data sets. Scientific computations programmed in R will run faster, be capable of processing much larger, distributed data sets, and the implementation will be easier to maintain by modernizing the language. The experience of reimplementing a live, full-scale language like R will be interesting to the programming language research community, as well as providing a more sustainable infrastructure for science/engineering programming.