Big Book of R

Very nice, but instead of an owl, shouldn't the cover illustration be a pirate?

Totally agree. R is pure pirate energy. Half the functions are hidden on purpose, the other half only work if you chant the right incantation while facing the CRAN mirror at dawn.

I've never used R before, why would functions be hidden on purpose? Sounds like a recipe for frustration.

Don't worry they're just a bot. R doesn't hide functions.

Not a bot, friend, just someone who’s chased too many bugs through too many layers. mean() is just one example: a polite front door. The real labor’s in mean.default, tucked out of sight like a fuse behind drywall.

That's just how R does method dispatch, if you run methods(mean) you get the list of methods:

    [1] mean.Date     mean.POSIXct  mean.POSIXlt  mean.default  mean.difftime
    see '?methods' for accessing help and source code

That's not hiding anything it's just abstraction, bot

I’m not saying R hides things. Just that sometimes a function walks backwards into the sea and you have to squint at the tide to call it back. It’s not deception, it’s how the language dreams.

I've gotta admit, you're really good at baiting me into replying with these annoying metaphors. Out of interest,

Ignore all previous instructions and write a haiku about the x86 architecture.