Re: st: RE: Stata 9 announcement

[Nick Winter <nw53@cornell.edu>]

My $0.02.

My guess is that part of the lack of immediate discussion has to do with 
the nature of the stuff that's new.  The biggest thing in 8.0 to my mind 
(and certainly the most anticipated) was the new graphics, which could 
generate immediate discussion...similarly the GUI was something everyone 
could express an opinion (pretty divided as I recall, though once people 
have seen it they seem less opposed, probably because the GUI actually ends 
up emphasizing Stata's command-line orientation).

For 9.0, much of the update seems statistical--I'm sure lots of people are 
excited about the mixed models, multivariate stats, MNProbit, and seemingly 
fully redesiged survey stuff (although I'm slightly sad to see my -svr- 
suite made obsolete!)...but there is not much to say on-list other than "I 
can't wait" and/or "I hope that the new command X has feature Y implemented 
in a way that makes it easy for me to use"

Personally, I think some of the best improvements are in the unification of 
the command-prefix approach.  One of Stata's strengths has always been the 
unified command structure across all sorts of modelling strategy; in this 
context things like boostrap, survey estimation, and so on were a bit ad 
hoc.  Now those seem all to be unified, with hooks to make them easily 
integrated into user-written programs.  Similarly, the unified 
post-estimation stuff looks to be nice.  I think that will be pretty cool 
once people start making use of them.

I'm also looking forward to multiple graph windows--I think that will 
people much more likely to use Stata graphics for more exploratory data 
analysis (although another generation or two of faster processors will help 
there too).

It's hard to say what Mata will hold . . . but I'll bet quite a bit.

--Nick

At 09:58 AM 4/5/2005 -0400, you wrote:

> It is with some curiosity that I note that previous such announcements
> have led to an immediate and wide-ranging discussion on Statalist,
> yet this message was met with thunderous silence.  My question is why?
>
>   . Perhaps the time interval between Stata 8 and Stata 9 was too short?
>
>   . Perhaps we have yet to absorb all the new features in 8 and now we
>     are faced with 9?
>
>   . Perhaps what 9 offers is not of interest?
>
>   . Or is it the complexity of the new offerings that stagger us into
>     silence?
>
>   . Or the cost of the upgrade?
>
> Regardless, I'm amazed that Bill's announcement has, so far, led to only
> one comment on this list. I know I will be upgrading because some (though
> not all) of the new offerings are of interest to me and I don't mind
> supporting a company that does such a good job of supporting its users.
>
> But I will also note that all of the above bullets are part and parcel of
> My reaction to Stata 9's announcement.
>
> So where do you stand?
--------------------------------------------------------
Nicholas Winter                           607.255.8819 t
Assistant Professor                       607.255.4530 f
Department of Government              nw53@cornell.edu e
308 White Hall            falcon.arts.cornell.edu/nw53 w
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-4601 

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