I don't have to use SAS any more! To celebrate, and to help out any analysts who haven't used it before, I've gathered some reviews.1
"Rare is the data system developer that defines only two data types, and equally rare is the technical lead that allows NaNs to behave like negative infinity. Sure to excite!"
"The macro system is sort of cute I guess. It's kind of like if you hired a CS undergrad and just let them implement whatever came to mind first. I found it refreshing."
"What the hell is 'cards' supposed to mean?"
"Although the statistics procedures are professionally designed, with sensible defaults, comprehensive documentation, and implementations for everything an analyst could need, the language itself is a tragic failure. Equals signs are used to copy with truncation to a fixed byte length, happily mangling multi-byte code points; every procedure has a laundry list of parameters with a syntax that feels randomly cobbled together; system options are difficult to remember and impact applications in mysterious ways. One is struck by the feeling that they lost control of the ship so long ago that it could never be righted."
"SASStudio is a dumpster fire."
"Imbued with an air of corporate professionalism and polish that can cover up even the most sinful of design choices."
"I'm sorry, text selection is broken and you still shipped this app? Who approved this?"
"A marvelous juxtaposition of the ancient and the modern. A tremendous achievement."
"The SAS community forums are a testament to the resilience and creativity of data analysts everywhere, who, having been forced against their will to use this terrible software, nevertheless carry on, leaving hack after hack in their wake."
"Oh, I never actually tried it. The online docs took like a year to load and I didn't have the patience."
...and now for some real ones:
"The only thing I've ever heard about SAS here on Reddit is that people hate it. Yep, that's it. Everyone seems to hate this language, or wishes they could erase it from planet Earth and never hear from it again."
— Reddit user
"My boss just informed me that SAS is not free to use, which blew my mind to be honest."
— u/UnivStudent2
"It's an absolute terror to work with if you know R or Python, but for the right environment it's marketable."
— u/DataaaMan
"I found learning SAS to be one of the most infuriating learning experiences of my life."
— Ackbach
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Well, not exactly, I mostly made them up. When I was using it I actually maintained a list of complaints, which came in handy. ↩