Jim Gardner<p>A little known fact about the R programming language. People think that it’s named as a playful take on S, or the names of the creators.</p><p>Actually, its the two ‘r’s from transgender, which when combined, form the powerful uppercase ‘R’. Ihaka and Ross knew that there would always be trans users and contributors and they were equally as important as everyone else. Maybe more important (they thought trans people might have secret magical powers that could one day be combined to overthrow the Galactic Empire).</p><p>They also considered naming it T, for obvious reasons both alphabetical and otherwise. But they felt this might take away from the other trans programming language of the day, forTran</p><p><a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/RealFacts" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>RealFacts</span></a> <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/rStats" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>rStats</span></a></p>