As an R user, I get what you mean. If you need to do things that don't fit well in the "tidyverse" model, you have three options: 1. Wrap the complicated bits

As an R user, I get what you mean. If you need to do things that don't fit well in the "tidyverse" model, you have three options: 1. Wrap the complicated bits in functions, then force it into the tidyverse model by abusing summarize and mutate. 2. Use data.table. It's very adaptable and handles arbitrary multiline expressions (returning a data.table if the last expression returns a list, otherwise returning the object as-is). 3. Use base R. It's not as bad as people make it out to be. You'll need to learn it to anyway, if you want to do anything beyond the basics.