11 ms·

Maker of RStudio launches new R and Python IDE

175 points by javierluraschi 2y ago

pjmlp 2y ago
Visual Studio Code is the new Eclipse it seems, now everyone and their dog are shipping IDE distributions that are just re-packing plugins.
kleiba 2y ago
Speaking of which: does anyone here on HN feel comfortable recommending a Python IDE that's half-way bearable on iPads?
- Fwirt 2y ago
  Haven't tried it yet, but personally I'm very interested in Pythonista which also exposes an impressive number of iOS APIs (bluetooth, camera, etc.) that you can use in your scripts. No idea how it functions as an IDE though.
- shmoogy 2y ago
  Hosted vs code server is what I used to use: https://github.com/coder/code-server https://github.com/coder/code-server They've added support in blink as well which is my favorite iOS purchase for productivity on my iPad https://blink.sh/ https://blink.sh/
- Terretta 2y ago
  Pythonista is nicer but ships older Python: https://omz-software.com/pythonista/ https://omz-software.com/pythonista/ Pyto is maybe less approachable but more up to date, with clang compiler and LLVM bitcode interpreter: https://pyto.app/ https://pyto.app/ Juno is Python notebooks: https://juno.sh/https://juno.sh/ https://juno.sh/https://juno.sh/ In general I prefer Blink Code: https://docs.blink.sh/advanced/code https://docs.blink.sh/advanced/code
  - darkteflon 2y ago
    Yeah Blink with the built-in VS Code is so far ahead of other options. Being able to remote back to your machine and pick up right where you left off is unbeatable.
- setopt 2y ago
  Not an IDE, but “Carnets” gives you a local (i.e. offline) Jupyter installation on iPadOS that includes NumPy, SciPy, Matplotlib, etc.
  - spratzt 2y ago
    I second this recommendation. I used Carnets for the Advent of Code last year. I ran out of steam long before it did.
teruakohatu 2y ago
This looks great, combining the best of VSCode and RStudio. I prefer coding in VSCode but prefer data exploration in RStudio. One issue with this is the lack of copilot. Copilot can be installed on VSCodium [1] but it breaks often. The other is MS’s proprietary Remove Development extension that enables a lot of functionality in VSCode. There is an open equivalent but I haven’t tried it [2] [1] https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/discussions/1487 https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/discussions/1487 [2] https://open-vsx.org/extension/jeanp413/open-remote-ssh https://open-vsx.org/extension/jeanp413/open-remote-ssh
- jmcphers 2y ago
  open-remote-ssh doesn't currently work with Positron because Positron does not currently build the bundles that need to be installed inside the remote host. We're definitely interested in making this work, though; stay tuned!
  - mbreese 2y ago
    That’s been my problem with any non-MS vscode distribution. Missing Remote-SSH and devcontainers. Both of which I tend to use a lot — especially remote ssh with large datasets that exist on remote servers. Otherwise, I’d be all in for this!
    - teruakohatu 2y ago
      Yes I agree, I forgot about dev containers. If I am doing ML most of the time I am using a server GPU with a large dataset. This is one of the use cases that made me use VSCode more than RStudio. When I have really wanted to use RStudio I use the web version, but its less pleasant than a simple ssh remote.
  - teruakohatu 2y ago
    That is great to know. I work in an academic environment and would gladly give feedback on this from the perspective of teaching post grads. Feel free to contact, email in hn profile.
- 2y ago
gepost 2y ago
What is the strategy behind the dizzying pace of product changes in the R/Python space? I heard that RStudio was a great product, yet they have to redo everything again, of course also renaming the company as is also standard practice in the Python "scientific" market. Is it Jupyter envy? Why is it not possible to keep one good product and stay with it? I wish MatLab licenses weren't so expensive, at this point I'd just buy one and sit all this churn out.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
  I think the R people see the writing on the wall. Python has sucked all the air out of the room, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to target the R space exclusively. If you had no legacy or compliance requirements, are you going to start a new data project in SAS, R, or Python? Where are you going to find the most talent?
  - esalman 2y ago
    I have an impression that most SotA algorithms in many fields that are not deep learning are made available first as R (or even Matlab) package. Obviously they do get ported to python once they receive enough traction.
    - greenpresident 2y ago
      This has been my impression in social science academia: a lot of ready to run methods are released as R packages.
  - kyawzazaw 2y ago
    the problem is life sciences and statisticans are not going to learn Python though. and that's the talent
    - asdff 2y ago
      On the ground however, they learn both. Or I should say if you find someone who is exclusive to one or the other language (which happens), they aren't much of a programmer to begin with. There is a whole food chain essentially in life sciences in academia with computer knowledge. There are those who write the tooling, who are perhaps so abstracted they don't know the underlying biology and vet their tooling based on simulated data and a comparison with existing tooling, toiling in their own castles on tooling that might not ever see a real dataset. There are those who use the tooling to create novel pipelines to analyze data and draw conclusions based on their own or their collaborators literature research or life science perspectives, they might not care if the finding is truly novel or if its merely proving an existing gumption with a tool that hasn't yet been applied to an existing dataset. Then there are also those who run the pipelines created by others within their research group, sometimes others who have long left that given research group, with brittle hardcoded paths and other "DO NOT TOUCH" segments in a massive single 2500 line file that gurgitates some plots from a standard sort of csv file as input.
josephcsible 2y ago
Warning: This is released under the Elastic License, which for obvious reasons is neither free software nor open source: > You may not provide the software to third parties as a hosted or managed service, where the service provides users with access to any substantial set of the features or functionality of the software. > You may not move, change, disable, or circumvent the license key functionality in the software, and you may not remove or obscure any functionality in the software that is protected by the license key. https://github.com/posit-dev/positron/blob/main/LICENSE.txt https://github.com/posit-dev/positron/blob/main/LICENSE.txt
legobmw99 2y ago
It seems a little odd to me that this is not just… a vscode extension pack?
- jmcphers 2y ago
  A good question. The VS Code extension API is pretty powerful but extensions run separately from the main workbench process and they can't draw any meaningful UI on it. This was a great design decision IMHO as it is the core reason VS Code has a reputation for a minimalist UI and good performance despite being based on Electron. However it also made it impossible to build the kinds of experiences we wanted to with Positron. Positron has a bunch of top-level UI as well as some integrated/horizontal services that don't make sense as extensions. We built those into the core of the system which is why a fork was necessary. It's a goal for Positron to be extensible, so it has its own API alongside VS Code's API, and both the R and Python language systems are implemented as extensions.
  - i-am-grout 2y ago
    I'm curious if you would be willing to elaborate on what your plans are for longer term feature parity with vscode? As in I can imagine as vscode receives continued development and new features you will have the development burden of having to integrate these updates into your fork. Are you planning to keep up-to-date with vscode or will the products essentially drift a part over time? If the latter would this mean extension developers have to build separate extensions for your IDE?
    - jmcphers 2y ago
      We merge upstream from VS Code every month and we plan to keep up to date with it, so extensions will continue to work and we'll continue to inherit new features as they become available. It's a development burden for sure -- but still an order of magnitude cheaper than trying to build a good workbench surface from scratch.
darkteflon 2y ago
Relatedly, has anyone found a really good extension for interacting with .tsv, .csv, files in VS Code? PyCharm is much nicer on that front.
- setopt 2y ago
  Did you try the Excel Viewer? It shows CSV files as a table. Doesn’t handle huge files though.
  - prometheon1 2y ago
    +1 Excel Viewer user, I've heard good things about Data Wrangler as well
justinclift 2y ago
Just noticed this: Because Microsoft does not allow third-party IDEs to access the official VS Code Marketplace ... Anyone know why? My wild guess is it means MS doesn't want third parties to build their own VS Code based IDEs (like this one)?
- jmcphers 2y ago
  There's some thoughtful speculation on this here: "Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture" - https://ghuntley.com/fracture/ https://ghuntley.com/fracture/
  - lembcva 2y ago
    Very interesting, I hope the (formerly) RStudio people read this. So they are giving up an IDE (RStudio) that was famous for far better graphics and plotting than the Python alternatives for a half-open third party solution where Posit is the sharecropper. This Microsoft "DevDiv" (see the link) sounds like the classic EEE dressed up as "open", "hip" and with all the right buzzwords.
    - nickstrayer 2y ago
      The person that posted that link is the lead architect on Positron. So yeah it's certainly known about!
bluenose69 2y ago
I would expect a bit more backwards compatibility for R packages. When I open a package.Rproj file with RStudio, it has GUI elements to build the package, to test it, etc. When I open it with positron, it is treated like a text file, at least as far as I can tell by looking at the many icons and pulldown menus. It is a weird choice, making a new application that cannot handle the key file type from its ancestor.
- TomMasz 2y ago
  That's unfortunate. I've got a personal project that I'm working on at the moment that mixes Python and R and I'm too far in now to make starting over from scratch viable.
- jmcphers 2y ago
  Positron isn't supposed to be a replacement for RStudio for all use cases (especially not this early in its lifecycle!). If you open your package folder in Positron (as opposed to the Rproj file itself) I think you'll find it has most of the commands you need for package development in the Palette. We do hope to add better GUI tooling for project-level actions; more info here: https://github.com/posit-dev/positron/issues/1486 https://github.com/posit-dev/positron/issues/1486
SassyBird 2y ago
Are they going to drop RStudio? I very much prefer its Qt interface over whatever VSCode invented. It’s fast, has nice keyboard shortcuts, none of that pointless padding and it just feels great to use.
- wodenokoto 2y ago
  It's not QT. The interface is HTML+css via node.
  - SassyBird 2y ago
    It’s Qt: https://github.com/rstudio/rstudio/blob/main/src/cpp/desktop/CMakeLists.txt https://github.com/rstudio/rstudio/blob/main/src/cpp/desktop... It seems with some JavaScript generated from Java via Gwt. Regardless, I prefer it over VSCode UI.
    - jmcphers 2y ago
      RStudio was based on QtWebKit, then migrated to QtWebEngine, then finally migrated to Electron (which is what it uses today). You'll find some vestigial Qt code in the repository but it isn't used for the shipping releases any more.
- thomas_mock 2y ago
  Hey! Product Manager for RStudio here (and Positron). We have no plans to stop development or maintenance on RStudio, and are committed to it for our users, both paid and community. While Positron and RStudio have some features in common, some R-focused features will remain exclusive to RStudio. If you're currently using RStudio and are happy with the experience, you can continue to enjoy RStudio. RStudio includes 10+ years of applied optimizations for R data analysis and package development. Cross-posting the FAQ: https://github.com/posit-dev/positron/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions https://github.com/posit-dev/positron/wiki/Frequently-Asked-...
  - SassyBird 2y ago
conradolandia 2y ago
Spyder-IDE is a better option
rldjbpin 2y ago
having used rstudio academically, the new ide looks like a refreshed version of it, which happens to come with the familiar vs code sidebar. personally, i see the value of rstudio (and in extension positron) while learning in a course, but i struggle to find its place beyond data exploration. despite the licensing stuff, if they can provide some based defaults (removing microsoft telemetry "sauce"), it can be an ergonomic way to bring math-sided team members to share the same development platform.

Visual Studio Code is the new Eclipse it seems, now everyone and their dog are shipping IDE distributions that are just re-packing plugins.

kleiba 2y ago

Speaking of which: does anyone here on HN feel comfortable recommending a Python IDE that's half-way bearable on iPads?

Fwirt 2y ago
Haven't tried it yet, but personally I'm very interested in Pythonista which also exposes an impressive number of iOS APIs (bluetooth, camera, etc.) that you can use in your scripts. No idea how it functions as an IDE though.
shmoogy 2y ago
Hosted vs code server is what I used to use: https://github.com/coder/code-server https://github.com/coder/code-server They've added support in blink as well which is my favorite iOS purchase for productivity on my iPad https://blink.sh/ https://blink.sh/
Terretta 2y ago
Pythonista is nicer but ships older Python: https://omz-software.com/pythonista/ https://omz-software.com/pythonista/ Pyto is maybe less approachable but more up to date, with clang compiler and LLVM bitcode interpreter: https://pyto.app/ https://pyto.app/ Juno is Python notebooks: https://juno.sh/https://juno.sh/ https://juno.sh/https://juno.sh/ In general I prefer Blink Code: https://docs.blink.sh/advanced/code https://docs.blink.sh/advanced/code
- darkteflon 2y ago
  Yeah Blink with the built-in VS Code is so far ahead of other options. Being able to remote back to your machine and pick up right where you left off is unbeatable.
setopt 2y ago
Not an IDE, but “Carnets” gives you a local (i.e. offline) Jupyter installation on iPadOS that includes NumPy, SciPy, Matplotlib, etc.
- spratzt 2y ago
  I second this recommendation. I used Carnets for the Advent of Code last year. I ran out of steam long before it did.

teruakohatu 2y ago

This looks great, combining the best of VSCode and RStudio. I prefer coding in VSCode but prefer data exploration in RStudio. One issue with this is the lack of copilot. Copilot can be installed on VSCodium [1] but it breaks often. The other is MS’s proprietary Remove Development extension that enables a lot of functionality in VSCode. There is an open equivalent but I haven’t tried it [2] [1] https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/discussions/1487 https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/discussions/1487 [2] https://open-vsx.org/extension/jeanp413/open-remote-ssh https://open-vsx.org/extension/jeanp413/open-remote-ssh

jmcphers 2y ago
open-remote-ssh doesn't currently work with Positron because Positron does not currently build the bundles that need to be installed inside the remote host. We're definitely interested in making this work, though; stay tuned!
- mbreese 2y ago
  That’s been my problem with any non-MS vscode distribution. Missing Remote-SSH and devcontainers. Both of which I tend to use a lot — especially remote ssh with large datasets that exist on remote servers. Otherwise, I’d be all in for this!
  - teruakohatu 2y ago
    Yes I agree, I forgot about dev containers. If I am doing ML most of the time I am using a server GPU with a large dataset. This is one of the use cases that made me use VSCode more than RStudio. When I have really wanted to use RStudio I use the web version, but its less pleasant than a simple ssh remote.
- teruakohatu 2y ago
  That is great to know. I work in an academic environment and would gladly give feedback on this from the perspective of teaching post grads. Feel free to contact, email in hn profile.
2y ago

gepost 2y ago

What is the strategy behind the dizzying pace of product changes in the R/Python space? I heard that RStudio was a great product, yet they have to redo everything again, of course also renaming the company as is also standard practice in the Python "scientific" market. Is it Jupyter envy? Why is it not possible to keep one good product and stay with it? I wish MatLab licenses weren't so expensive, at this point I'd just buy one and sit all this churn out.

0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
I think the R people see the writing on the wall. Python has sucked all the air out of the room, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to target the R space exclusively. If you had no legacy or compliance requirements, are you going to start a new data project in SAS, R, or Python? Where are you going to find the most talent?
- esalman 2y ago
  I have an impression that most SotA algorithms in many fields that are not deep learning are made available first as R (or even Matlab) package. Obviously they do get ported to python once they receive enough traction.
  - greenpresident 2y ago
    This has been my impression in social science academia: a lot of ready to run methods are released as R packages.
- kyawzazaw 2y ago
  the problem is life sciences and statisticans are not going to learn Python though. and that's the talent
  - asdff 2y ago
    On the ground however, they learn both. Or I should say if you find someone who is exclusive to one or the other language (which happens), they aren't much of a programmer to begin with. There is a whole food chain essentially in life sciences in academia with computer knowledge. There are those who write the tooling, who are perhaps so abstracted they don't know the underlying biology and vet their tooling based on simulated data and a comparison with existing tooling, toiling in their own castles on tooling that might not ever see a real dataset. There are those who use the tooling to create novel pipelines to analyze data and draw conclusions based on their own or their collaborators literature research or life science perspectives, they might not care if the finding is truly novel or if its merely proving an existing gumption with a tool that hasn't yet been applied to an existing dataset. Then there are also those who run the pipelines created by others within their research group, sometimes others who have long left that given research group, with brittle hardcoded paths and other "DO NOT TOUCH" segments in a massive single 2500 line file that gurgitates some plots from a standard sort of csv file as input.

josephcsible 2y ago

Warning: This is released under the Elastic License, which for obvious reasons is neither free software nor open source: > You may not provide the software to third parties as a hosted or managed service, where the service provides users with access to any substantial set of the features or functionality of the software. > You may not move, change, disable, or circumvent the license key functionality in the software, and you may not remove or obscure any functionality in the software that is protected by the license key. https://github.com/posit-dev/positron/blob/main/LICENSE.txt https://github.com/posit-dev/positron/blob/main/LICENSE.txt

legobmw99 2y ago

It seems a little odd to me that this is not just… a vscode extension pack?

jmcphers 2y ago
A good question. The VS Code extension API is pretty powerful but extensions run separately from the main workbench process and they can't draw any meaningful UI on it. This was a great design decision IMHO as it is the core reason VS Code has a reputation for a minimalist UI and good performance despite being based on Electron. However it also made it impossible to build the kinds of experiences we wanted to with Positron. Positron has a bunch of top-level UI as well as some integrated/horizontal services that don't make sense as extensions. We built those into the core of the system which is why a fork was necessary. It's a goal for Positron to be extensible, so it has its own API alongside VS Code's API, and both the R and Python language systems are implemented as extensions.
- i-am-grout 2y ago
  I'm curious if you would be willing to elaborate on what your plans are for longer term feature parity with vscode? As in I can imagine as vscode receives continued development and new features you will have the development burden of having to integrate these updates into your fork. Are you planning to keep up-to-date with vscode or will the products essentially drift a part over time? If the latter would this mean extension developers have to build separate extensions for your IDE?
  - jmcphers 2y ago
    We merge upstream from VS Code every month and we plan to keep up to date with it, so extensions will continue to work and we'll continue to inherit new features as they become available. It's a development burden for sure -- but still an order of magnitude cheaper than trying to build a good workbench surface from scratch.

darkteflon 2y ago

Relatedly, has anyone found a really good extension for interacting with .tsv, .csv, files in VS Code? PyCharm is much nicer on that front.

setopt 2y ago
Did you try the Excel Viewer? It shows CSV files as a table. Doesn’t handle huge files though.
- prometheon1 2y ago
  +1 Excel Viewer user, I've heard good things about Data Wrangler as well

justinclift 2y ago

Just noticed this: Because Microsoft does not allow third-party IDEs to access the official VS Code Marketplace ... Anyone know why? My wild guess is it means MS doesn't want third parties to build their own VS Code based IDEs (like this one)?

jmcphers 2y ago
There's some thoughtful speculation on this here: "Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture" - https://ghuntley.com/fracture/ https://ghuntley.com/fracture/
- lembcva 2y ago
  Very interesting, I hope the (formerly) RStudio people read this. So they are giving up an IDE (RStudio) that was famous for far better graphics and plotting than the Python alternatives for a half-open third party solution where Posit is the sharecropper. This Microsoft "DevDiv" (see the link) sounds like the classic EEE dressed up as "open", "hip" and with all the right buzzwords.
  - nickstrayer 2y ago
    The person that posted that link is the lead architect on Positron. So yeah it's certainly known about!

bluenose69 2y ago

I would expect a bit more backwards compatibility for R packages. When I open a package.Rproj file with RStudio, it has GUI elements to build the package, to test it, etc. When I open it with positron, it is treated like a text file, at least as far as I can tell by looking at the many icons and pulldown menus. It is a weird choice, making a new application that cannot handle the key file type from its ancestor.

TomMasz 2y ago
That's unfortunate. I've got a personal project that I'm working on at the moment that mixes Python and R and I'm too far in now to make starting over from scratch viable.
jmcphers 2y ago
Positron isn't supposed to be a replacement for RStudio for all use cases (especially not this early in its lifecycle!). If you open your package folder in Positron (as opposed to the Rproj file itself) I think you'll find it has most of the commands you need for package development in the Palette. We do hope to add better GUI tooling for project-level actions; more info here: https://github.com/posit-dev/positron/issues/1486 https://github.com/posit-dev/positron/issues/1486

SassyBird 2y ago

Are they going to drop RStudio? I very much prefer its Qt interface over whatever VSCode invented. It’s fast, has nice keyboard shortcuts, none of that pointless padding and it just feels great to use.

wodenokoto 2y ago
It's not QT. The interface is HTML+css via node.
- SassyBird 2y ago
  It’s Qt: https://github.com/rstudio/rstudio/blob/main/src/cpp/desktop/CMakeLists.txt https://github.com/rstudio/rstudio/blob/main/src/cpp/desktop... It seems with some JavaScript generated from Java via Gwt. Regardless, I prefer it over VSCode UI.
  - jmcphers 2y ago
    RStudio was based on QtWebKit, then migrated to QtWebEngine, then finally migrated to Electron (which is what it uses today). You'll find some vestigial Qt code in the repository but it isn't used for the shipping releases any more.
thomas_mock 2y ago
Hey! Product Manager for RStudio here (and Positron). We have no plans to stop development or maintenance on RStudio, and are committed to it for our users, both paid and community. While Positron and RStudio have some features in common, some R-focused features will remain exclusive to RStudio. If you're currently using RStudio and are happy with the experience, you can continue to enjoy RStudio. RStudio includes 10+ years of applied optimizations for R data analysis and package development. Cross-posting the FAQ: https://github.com/posit-dev/positron/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions https://github.com/posit-dev/positron/wiki/Frequently-Asked-...
- SassyBird 2y ago

conradolandia 2y ago

Spyder-IDE is a better option

rldjbpin 2y ago

having used rstudio academically, the new ide looks like a refreshed version of it, which happens to come with the familiar vs code sidebar. personally, i see the value of rstudio (and in extension positron) while learning in a course, but i struggle to find its place beyond data exploration. despite the licensing stuff, if they can provide some based defaults (removing microsoft telemetry "sauce"), it can be an ergonomic way to bring math-sided team members to share the same development platform.