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Personally never did R studio. Unfiltered command line is always more flexible, and prevents inertial lockin to a specific tool, OS, to a large extent. Now I'm

Personally never did R studio. Unfiltered command line is always more flexible, and prevents inertial lockin to a specific tool, OS, to a large extent. Now I'm supposed to do R in ultra-bloated Visual Studio?? I learned R precisely to get away from the inefficiency of the (in the past 20 years, functionally unchanged, visual-candy-only) Excel. How am I to be excited about adding this thick, lumpy MS gravy, to my pure R experience? So that when I do R on Linux or remotely I'm screwed? No thanks. Addendum: Clearly the hive mind MS corporate drones are out in force today/tonight. I know everybody is enamoured with MS-Eclipse etc but R is best used unfiltered. Not hijacked into the laughable world of Windows and Visual Studio. I know from bitter experience that the Windows versions of R are terribly unstable by comparison with the Linux builds. I learned the latter precisely for that reason. MS is playing a fantastic marketing game but I was agnostic on platform until R on Windows started showing its catastrophic limitations. It's a second class citizen as soon as you venture beyond the basics. Take it from an ex R-on-Windows guy who uses R 10 hours per day.

bhandziuk 11y ago
I don't think the R Console or RStudio are going away. Feel free to keep using whatever you want. If you normally have VS open and you also use R then this news is great, otherwise, you get to keep going about your merry way.
- vegabook 11y ago
  Do you geddit that VS binds you to the inferior Windows builds of R? I use R every hour of every day. I started with Windows R with zero bias.....until I was forced to learn Linux against my will just to get the full, stable, all-libraries-work, experience.
  - smortaz 11y ago
    Not sure what you mean - RTVS works with CRAN R...
phillc73 11y ago
> R is best used unfiltered Actually, no it's not. One of R's strengths is its ability to manipulate data and then visualise the output. Doing this via the command line is slow and cumbersome. Do you plan to output a chart, save it, then open it with another application? RStudio excels in not just being an IDE, but also a visual data representation tool. Write the R code, view the chart in the same application (Rstudio), tweak until happy, then save. It's a much smoother iterative process. I'd be prepared to believe that perhaps a command line champion could manage libraries and develop code direct from the R interpreter, as well as I can using RStudio. However, I can't see how one could possibly produce the same quality data visualisation working directly at the command prompt. I don't know about Visual Studio, I don't use it, but your criticism of RStudio is wide of the mark.
- vegabook 11y ago
  Oh please. I do that 20x a day without R Studio. Saving a chart is as simple as png(...). You are clearly too mouse-bound. I reject your comment out of hand.
  - bhandziuk 11y ago
    Why save it at all when in RStudio you can skip that step. Doesn't have anything to do with a mouse either because you still write and execute all the code with the keyboard. This all seems very out of left field.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - nicercat 11y ago
      but you don't have to save it to view it under the command line. > plot(rnorm(100)) is not going to give you anything different under R-Studio, than command-line R, other than redirecting the identical output into a convenience window in its IDE. Sure R-Studio will save a history for you and throw a few conveniences at you but, command-line >plot(rnorm(100)) will popup a window on all OS versions of R and you'll be able to visualize all day long. Including multiple open charts. With selectable focus for further manipulation. R-Studio (MS-VS-RStudio) is just a very thin wrapper on something which is 100% there already. However, in return for nominal initial friendliness, it has the downside of sleepwalking you into a workflow which, if you don't understand what's going on underneath, will hold back your R learning curve. Now IDEs are useful, if you understand the tradeoffs. They're a higher-level wrapper on stuff, with all the pluses and minuses that that entails. Higher-level = lower learning curve, greater immediate productivity, vs lower-level = higher learning curve, lower immediate productivity but greater long term power.
smortaz 11y ago
what phillc73 said. Totally respect having a focused command line w no frills workflow. To each their own. But you should really give RStudio a try. It's a beautiful, highly productive R IDE with many features that make writing R much much more pleasant.
- vegabook 11y ago
  Thank you for a balanced view. R studio is a great piece of software, and the command line also deserves respect.
lottin 11y ago
It's quite true. Emacs has an R mode (ESS) and that is probably all you need. That said I think people are free to use whatever software they want, and this includes non-free software that is technically and philosophically inferior such as in this case.
Gatsky 11y ago
I would be interested in a concrete example of how you found command line R in Linux to be superior? I personally use R with RStudio on Windows and on the command line in a Linux cluster. I have found no differences, and am happy to use either, but tend to use RStudio because it suits my workflow better. Memory management in command line R on Linux seems better, but I don't run into that issue very often.
- vegabook 11y ago
  The command line is not superficially superior if all you are doing all day is interactively exploring data using R. In that case, R-Studio puts a layer of convenience around the workflow. But, like all reasons that the command line refuses to die across multiple applications (not just R), and is indeed in rude health, wrappers have their downside. They lock you in. They're higher level (lower flexibility). Being a non-essential surrogate technology, they're more prone to abandonment by the developers, which entails more risk to users. They're not doable easily remotely. Most importantly, if your workflow becomes IDE based, especially on graphics, then you will have a dearth of skills for implementing actual production code that does not rely on a local workstation running a local copy of the IDE in graphical environment. You'll be short of the understanding of how the plumbing works, limiting you to the exploration role of a single-user guy, and you'll limit the shareability of your work. Sure, R-Studio is great. But no, it's not an absolute good. It's a tradeoff. Know what you're giving up. Personally, I like to use the most generic, widespread version of tools as possible. I can SSH into any computer anywhere and be running R within minutes, with full familiarity with the environment. By the way, clearly I'm in the minority, and that's the problem. R itself is open source, but R-studio is not. Microsoft has clearly taken a view that they can buy a large part of the R ecosystem, by buying this tool. I consider this to be a bit of a hijack, and that is the last reason why I dislike R Studio -> it is a vector for undermining open source software and in this case, R itself as open to all. All of a sudden, a large (possibly majority) slice of the user base is beholden to a for-profit company and all its incentives. Not me.
  - Gatsky 11y ago
    Great answer, thank you.

bhandziuk 11y ago

I don't think the R Console or RStudio are going away. Feel free to keep using whatever you want. If you normally have VS open and you also use R then this news is great, otherwise, you get to keep going about your merry way.

vegabook 11y ago
Do you geddit that VS binds you to the inferior Windows builds of R? I use R every hour of every day. I started with Windows R with zero bias.....until I was forced to learn Linux against my will just to get the full, stable, all-libraries-work, experience.
- smortaz 11y ago
  Not sure what you mean - RTVS works with CRAN R...

phillc73 11y ago

> R is best used unfiltered Actually, no it's not. One of R's strengths is its ability to manipulate data and then visualise the output. Doing this via the command line is slow and cumbersome. Do you plan to output a chart, save it, then open it with another application? RStudio excels in not just being an IDE, but also a visual data representation tool. Write the R code, view the chart in the same application (Rstudio), tweak until happy, then save. It's a much smoother iterative process. I'd be prepared to believe that perhaps a command line champion could manage libraries and develop code direct from the R interpreter, as well as I can using RStudio. However, I can't see how one could possibly produce the same quality data visualisation working directly at the command prompt. I don't know about Visual Studio, I don't use it, but your criticism of RStudio is wide of the mark.

vegabook 11y ago
Oh please. I do that 20x a day without R Studio. Saving a chart is as simple as png(...). You are clearly too mouse-bound. I reject your comment out of hand.
- bhandziuk 11y ago
  Why save it at all when in RStudio you can skip that step. Doesn't have anything to do with a mouse either because you still write and execute all the code with the keyboard. This all seems very out of left field.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - nicercat 11y ago
    but you don't have to save it to view it under the command line. > plot(rnorm(100)) is not going to give you anything different under R-Studio, than command-line R, other than redirecting the identical output into a convenience window in its IDE. Sure R-Studio will save a history for you and throw a few conveniences at you but, command-line >plot(rnorm(100)) will popup a window on all OS versions of R and you'll be able to visualize all day long. Including multiple open charts. With selectable focus for further manipulation. R-Studio (MS-VS-RStudio) is just a very thin wrapper on something which is 100% there already. However, in return for nominal initial friendliness, it has the downside of sleepwalking you into a workflow which, if you don't understand what's going on underneath, will hold back your R learning curve. Now IDEs are useful, if you understand the tradeoffs. They're a higher-level wrapper on stuff, with all the pluses and minuses that that entails. Higher-level = lower learning curve, greater immediate productivity, vs lower-level = higher learning curve, lower immediate productivity but greater long term power.

smortaz 11y ago

what phillc73 said. Totally respect having a focused command line w no frills workflow. To each their own. But you should really give RStudio a try. It's a beautiful, highly productive R IDE with many features that make writing R much much more pleasant.

vegabook 11y ago
Thank you for a balanced view. R studio is a great piece of software, and the command line also deserves respect.

lottin 11y ago

It's quite true. Emacs has an R mode (ESS) and that is probably all you need. That said I think people are free to use whatever software they want, and this includes non-free software that is technically and philosophically inferior such as in this case.

Gatsky 11y ago

I would be interested in a concrete example of how you found command line R in Linux to be superior? I personally use R with RStudio on Windows and on the command line in a Linux cluster. I have found no differences, and am happy to use either, but tend to use RStudio because it suits my workflow better. Memory management in command line R on Linux seems better, but I don't run into that issue very often.

vegabook 11y ago
The command line is not superficially superior if all you are doing all day is interactively exploring data using R. In that case, R-Studio puts a layer of convenience around the workflow. But, like all reasons that the command line refuses to die across multiple applications (not just R), and is indeed in rude health, wrappers have their downside. They lock you in. They're higher level (lower flexibility). Being a non-essential surrogate technology, they're more prone to abandonment by the developers, which entails more risk to users. They're not doable easily remotely. Most importantly, if your workflow becomes IDE based, especially on graphics, then you will have a dearth of skills for implementing actual production code that does not rely on a local workstation running a local copy of the IDE in graphical environment. You'll be short of the understanding of how the plumbing works, limiting you to the exploration role of a single-user guy, and you'll limit the shareability of your work. Sure, R-Studio is great. But no, it's not an absolute good. It's a tradeoff. Know what you're giving up. Personally, I like to use the most generic, widespread version of tools as possible. I can SSH into any computer anywhere and be running R within minutes, with full familiarity with the environment. By the way, clearly I'm in the minority, and that's the problem. R itself is open source, but R-studio is not. Microsoft has clearly taken a view that they can buy a large part of the R ecosystem, by buying this tool. I consider this to be a bit of a hijack, and that is the last reason why I dislike R Studio -> it is a vector for undermining open source software and in this case, R itself as open to all. All of a sudden, a large (possibly majority) slice of the user base is beholden to a for-profit company and all its incentives. Not me.
- Gatsky 11y ago
  Great answer, thank you.