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the biggest concern I have heard from friends who work in stats and mathematics academia is that it is much, MUCH easier to publish a package in CRAN than to Py

the biggest concern I have heard from friends who work in stats and mathematics academia is that it is much, MUCH easier to publish a package in CRAN than to PyPi. I think most users of Python are that... "users". But R is used by creators of algorithms who find it very easy to create and distribute code. In fact a lot of them talk about how difficult it is to install packages in python, while any R script has "install.packages" right in it. I'm willing to bet if Pandas/Numpy/Jupyter built a CRAN-PY and made the packaging system similar to R, the adoption would be much different.

nipun_batra 11y ago
I do agree that stats people love R. This is one of the reasons I wrote this article. So that I can leverage all the good work they've gone. It is way better to write a wrapper than to reimplement everything from scratch. I'm coming from academia where I have a lot of systems work. So, I tend to be Python first user. But, I do want to utilise all the packages that are exclusively available in R. Packaging is improving in Python afaik. People like Anaconda!
- sandGorgon 11y ago
  its not packaging per se - conda and gem are brilliant, but its intended for software creators and not math acads. install.package may not be a brilliant piece of software, but its perfect for people who develop stats algorithms and just publish to cran. This is the package submission page to CRAN - https://cran.r-project.org/submit.html https://cran.r-project.org/submit.html This is the equivalent for Pypi - https://pypi.python.org/pypi?%3Aaction=submit_form https://pypi.python.org/pypi?%3Aaction=submit_form
  - stdbrouw 11y ago
    Submitting a package is the least important part of distributing it. For CRAN you can use the submit form you link to, for Python it's `python setup.py sdist upload` and you're done. CRAN in fact has much stricter standards for packages than Python -- you need a vignette, you need tests etc. -- which is why new R packages are usually on GitHub long before they make it to CRAN, whereas PyPI is happy to accept alpha and beta releases without documentation and without tests.
    - sandGorgon 11y ago
      thats actually interesting to know - it would be illuminating to find out what really is the mental roadblock there, because this is something I have heard from multiple acads.

nipun_batra 11y ago

I do agree that stats people love R. This is one of the reasons I wrote this article. So that I can leverage all the good work they've gone. It is way better to write a wrapper than to reimplement everything from scratch. I'm coming from academia where I have a lot of systems work. So, I tend to be Python first user. But, I do want to utilise all the packages that are exclusively available in R. Packaging is improving in Python afaik. People like Anaconda!

sandGorgon 11y ago
its not packaging per se - conda and gem are brilliant, but its intended for software creators and not math acads. install.package may not be a brilliant piece of software, but its perfect for people who develop stats algorithms and just publish to cran. This is the package submission page to CRAN - https://cran.r-project.org/submit.html https://cran.r-project.org/submit.html This is the equivalent for Pypi - https://pypi.python.org/pypi?%3Aaction=submit_form https://pypi.python.org/pypi?%3Aaction=submit_form
- stdbrouw 11y ago
  Submitting a package is the least important part of distributing it. For CRAN you can use the submit form you link to, for Python it's `python setup.py sdist upload` and you're done. CRAN in fact has much stricter standards for packages than Python -- you need a vignette, you need tests etc. -- which is why new R packages are usually on GitHub long before they make it to CRAN, whereas PyPI is happy to accept alpha and beta releases without documentation and without tests.
  - sandGorgon 11y ago
    thats actually interesting to know - it would be illuminating to find out what really is the mental roadblock there, because this is something I have heard from multiple acads.