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Jul 26, 2018 at 6:46 comment added elmaroto10 A little over 4 years since I gave my opinion on this subject. Since then I have interviewed and hired a number of young data professionals. Less then 10% with exposure to SAS, while the rest experienced in R and/or Python. Universities are teaching their students using open source, so, again, I would rather pay my staff, high skilled in open source tools, higher wages than give $90k per seat to SAS every year. They are happy because their skills are easily transferable.
Mar 10, 2014 at 22:04 comment added Scortchi @Aksakal: Licensing costs & vendor lock-in aren't trifling concerns. You don't buy SAS software in a shrink-wrapped box off the shelf in Dixon's - you need to cut a deal with SAS. So I shouldn't be concerned in the least about working for a company that I'd heard decided against a SAS licence on cost grounds. (Nor of course, for one that had decided it was worth it to them.)
Mar 10, 2014 at 14:02 comment added Frank Harrell I could not disagree more. There is an amazing amount of documentation about R - you just have to be good at filtering. I used SAS for 23 years so I feel qualified to compare the two languages and have witnessed first had how inefficient SAS programming is in the pharmaceutical industry. R is harder to learn in some ways because it is a complete programming language.
Mar 10, 2014 at 13:09 comment added Aksakal @FrankHarrell, I don't think you can support the claim about unit of production. Any references? Anyone who tried to learn SAS and R knows that R is much harder to pick due to the total absence of product documentation. Its help files are garbage compared to SAS.
Mar 10, 2014 at 1:35 comment added Frank Harrell Paying for SAS is only part of the problem. Software development takes far longer than using modern tools, so more SAS programmers are needed per unit of production.
Mar 10, 2014 at 0:40 comment added Aksakal software license costs usually are much smaller than the labor costs. if a company can't afford SAS license, will pay competitive salaries? i'd be concerned about this aspect. there are legitimate reasons to go with open source solutions and they are usually not the cost
Mar 10, 2014 at 0:20 review First posts
Mar 10, 2014 at 0:29
Mar 10, 2014 at 0:18 comment added Nick Stauner Ever wonder if the price is part of the appeal in industry? People tend to ascribe more value to things with higher pricetags...Here's hoping that model of value is on its way out!
S Mar 10, 2014 at 0:03 history answered elmaroto10 CC BY-SA 3.0
S Mar 10, 2014 at 0:03 history made wiki Post Made Community Wiki by elmaroto10