I think this is an important issue, and it would be great if we could discuss this. I’m most grateful for all the work on DataFrames.jl and related packages, and I certainly don’t want to have a negative impact on their development (though, frankly, I doubt that I could!). My impression (also based on @floswald 's view) is that people that would prefer a Stata-like interface to DataFrames.jl are a small minority among Julia users. Hence, there would be no risk of a split in interface that the community uses. And, to re-iterate, I’m well aware of the fact that the Stata-type approach has deficiencies as well. I just think that one shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
That’s actually how I started thinking of all this. But in the end I’m using all this to write papers, so I thought I might as well turn it into code that I can use.