A beta release of a new IDE for R, the open source language for statistics is now available for download. It looks like a full function modern IDE and as it's open source and free to download it is worth trying.

RStudio is an integrated development environment (IDE) for R which works with the standard version of R available from CRAN.

Like R, RStudio is available under an open source license. It provides all of the usual conveniences of an IDE - a code window, console, plot window and it uses a workspace metaphor.

You can customise the layout of the workspace and the code editor provides a range of useful tools including code completion, highlighting, execute from source and code transformations.  It also supports TeX and Sweave documents.

In short it looks like a full function modern IDE for R.

RStudio is available for Linux, Mac OSX and Windows - and you can run it in a web browser from a server installation.

RStudio is also a company, and it plans to sell services (support, training, consulting, hosting) related to the open-source software.

Given that the IDE is free and open source it is at least worth trying. You can download it here.

More information:

RStudio Blog

A Programmer's guide to R - Data and Objects