10 ms·

React for R

93 points by rrr_oh_man 2y ago

victorbjorklund 2y ago
Every day we stray further away from God.
- victorbjorklund 2y ago
  Jokes aside. Cool. Just wish it was Svelte.
rrr_oh_man 2y ago
(It's revolting and I love it.)
lincon127 2y ago
It's spreading... grab a torch! Only fire will keep it at bay!
- krick 2y ago
  I hope the torch pun is intentional. It should be, because, really, Python should replace R, because R won't replace Python, but, as you can see, it very much attempts to.
  - condwanaland 2y ago
    This is a false dichotomy. There is more than enough room for both languages, and R is not attempting to replace python
amarant 2y ago
This is quite surprising to me. My (admittedly limited) understanding of R is that it's focused on data analysis and graph generation. What need does react solve in that context?
- isoprophlex 2y ago
  A bit of a tangent but this might be somewhat illuminating: I worked for a big utility company. They needed some economic analysis done on where to best put some transport pipes into the ground, macro granularity (eg smallest unit was a neighborhood). The team that did the analysis apparently did a great job, so additional requirements were thrown their way: a frontend and an interactive planning module on designing the pipe networks on micro level (smallest unit was a single house) A year later the absolute maniacs delivered the application. They only knew R and some html/js, so that's what they used. Cursed as fuck of course, and because they were external they left short after. This was pretty bad for the people left holding the bag; I mostly found it awe inspiring in the "doom running on an electric toothbrush" kinda sense.
  - xiaodai 2y ago
    Shiny
  - qsort 2y ago
    R is cursed beyond reason, but traditional software engineers are sleeping on it, IMO. It's very easy for quantitative people that are not software developers to get something done quick. The downside is exactly what you described, most projects are not just the model, they eventually tend to incorporate generic data wrangling, UI/web code, etc, and a general purpose language tends to work better overall. I have a similar anecdote: I was brought in on a project where a group of terrorists implemented a solution for a TSP-like problem directly in R. We eventually replaced that thing with OR-Tools.
    - rrr_oh_man 2y ago
      > R is cursed beyond reason Why would you say that?
      - tomrod 2y ago
        As someone who uses Python, R, Go, Rust, Fortran, and Java... I would never write a full stack application in R. Terrible maintainability.
TheJCDenton 2y ago
Cursed
mhog_hn 2y ago
“React for R Shiny” is more accurate
Heliodex 2y ago
Note that this still renders to HTML with JS using V8; it's not entirely in R and components have to be exposed out of JS to R. I thought it would be more similar to the likes of React-Lua where the entire library (+ packages like React-DOM) is rewritten, though still very cool.

React for R

93 points by rrr_oh_man 2y ago

victorbjorklund 2y ago

Every day we stray further away from God.

victorbjorklund 2y ago
Jokes aside. Cool. Just wish it was Svelte.

rrr_oh_man 2y ago

(It's revolting and I love it.)

lincon127 2y ago

It's spreading... grab a torch! Only fire will keep it at bay!

krick 2y ago
I hope the torch pun is intentional. It should be, because, really, Python should replace R, because R won't replace Python, but, as you can see, it very much attempts to.
- condwanaland 2y ago
  This is a false dichotomy. There is more than enough room for both languages, and R is not attempting to replace python

amarant 2y ago

This is quite surprising to me. My (admittedly limited) understanding of R is that it's focused on data analysis and graph generation. What need does react solve in that context?

isoprophlex 2y ago
A bit of a tangent but this might be somewhat illuminating: I worked for a big utility company. They needed some economic analysis done on where to best put some transport pipes into the ground, macro granularity (eg smallest unit was a neighborhood). The team that did the analysis apparently did a great job, so additional requirements were thrown their way: a frontend and an interactive planning module on designing the pipe networks on micro level (smallest unit was a single house) A year later the absolute maniacs delivered the application. They only knew R and some html/js, so that's what they used. Cursed as fuck of course, and because they were external they left short after. This was pretty bad for the people left holding the bag; I mostly found it awe inspiring in the "doom running on an electric toothbrush" kinda sense.
- xiaodai 2y ago
  Shiny
- qsort 2y ago
  R is cursed beyond reason, but traditional software engineers are sleeping on it, IMO. It's very easy for quantitative people that are not software developers to get something done quick. The downside is exactly what you described, most projects are not just the model, they eventually tend to incorporate generic data wrangling, UI/web code, etc, and a general purpose language tends to work better overall. I have a similar anecdote: I was brought in on a project where a group of terrorists implemented a solution for a TSP-like problem directly in R. We eventually replaced that thing with OR-Tools.
  - rrr_oh_man 2y ago
    > R is cursed beyond reason Why would you say that?
    - tomrod 2y ago
      As someone who uses Python, R, Go, Rust, Fortran, and Java... I would never write a full stack application in R. Terrible maintainability.

TheJCDenton 2y ago

Cursed

mhog_hn 2y ago

“React for R Shiny” is more accurate

Heliodex 2y ago

Note that this still renders to HTML with JS using V8; it's not entirely in R and components have to be exposed out of JS to R. I thought it would be more similar to the likes of React-Lua where the entire library (+ packages like React-DOM) is rewritten, though still very cool.