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Positron – A next-generation data science IDE
- williamstein 1y agoNot 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.”
- sunnybeetroot 1y agoSoftware can’t be considered open source if it has a restrictive license? Which license is mandatory?
- williamstein 1y agohttps://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd
- alterom 1y agoWhile this is "based on" the open source codebase of VSCode, it's very much unclear from the project page which features and dependencies aren't open source or even free-as-in-beer (..and may require a paid subscription, enterprise plan purchase, premium account, etc). I.e., where they are making money off of this. One clear indication that there are strings attached is that they're bundling a specialized GenAI assistant with the IDE. Wish it was made clear in the FAQ. It doesn't cover this at all.
- juliasilge 1y agoHello! I work on Positron. We outline some answers here: https://positron.posit.co/faqs.html#how-can-i-use-positron-with-a-server https://positron.posit.co/faqs.html#how-can-i-use-positron-w... tl;dr is that the desktop app (including remote SSH sessions) is free to use with a permissive license (no account needed, no subscription, commercial use is OK, etc), but using Positron in a server mode does require a paid subscription.
- teruakohatu 1y agoCan it be run through a web browser like VS Code and RStudio? Why did you relicense it under Elastic License 2.0 from VSCode’s MIT? A better alternative would be proprietary extensions under a different license like Microsoft does.
- juliasilge 1y agoYes, but that is the server mode that is not free to use. If you want a free mode that lets you connect to a server, you might want to check out the remote SSH support: https://positron.posit.co/remote-ssh.html https://positron.posit.co/remote-ssh.html We talk a bit about why we chose the Elastic license here: https://positron.posit.co/licensing.html https://positron.posit.co/licensing.html We have thought pretty carefully about what kind of functionality works well in extensions (in fact, we build and maintain a number of extensions!) and came to the decision that the more integrated data science experience we wanted to make required forking.
- notpushkin 1y agoPlease consider adding a delayed open-source license/clause :-) Also, are you using Open VSX, and what’s your take on the recent malware extension story?
- juliasilge 1y agoThanks for your thoughts on the license; we know that it's FRAUGHT, for sure. Our company makes quite a lot of software available under OSI-approved licenses (MIT, etc) and we did think pretty carefully about what to try here, given our goals around both OSS and building a sustainable business. We do use OpenVSX, yes, like the other forks, and our company is a major sponsor of OpenVSX. Security around the extension ecosystem is a pretty messy, complicated issue both for the proprietary Microsoft marketplace and OpenVSX. For example, the recent Amazon Q story! I currently think about it as conceptually fairly similar to the risks of using packages from PyPI or npm.
- aleph_minus_one 1y agoPositron is also the name of an ultra-portable 3D printer > https://www.positron3d.com/ https://www.positron3d.com/ that actually defined its whole new class of ultra-portable 3D printers (Positron-style 3D printers; their drive system is named "Positron drive"). A sibling of the Positron is the JourneyMaker: > https://github.com/mcfazio2001/JourneyMaker-Positron https://github.com/mcfazio2001/JourneyMaker-Positron A cost-reduced (no CNC-machined parts) variant of the JourneyMaker with a unibody chassis that you can 3D-print by yourself is the Lemontron: > https://lemontron.com/ https://lemontron.com/
- ZeroCool2u 1y agoKind of unfortunate that it uses pyright and jedi instead of just basedpyright for the more advanced features. Python language support just isn't great with jedi compared to pylance or basedpyright. And not to beat a dead horse, but I'm also not a huge fan of the broad claims around it being OSS when it very clearly has some strict limitations. I've already had to migrate from R Connect Server / Posit Server at work, because of the extreme pricing for doing simple things like having auth enabled on internal apps. We found a great alternative that's much better anyways, plus made our security folks a lot happier, but it was still a massive pain and frustrated users. I've avoided any commercial products from Posit since then and this one makes me hesitant especially with these blurry lines.
- i000 1y agoWhat is the alternative? Posit princing is absurd. Even academia is charged arm and leg - and the value, very questionable.
- sieste 1y agoPositron looks like the next version of Rstudio, which is currently free. Do you think the plan is to phase out support for the free product and push users into the paid one?
- i000 1y agoI am talking about the RStudio Server and Connect - these are really expensive. One of the sales reps claimed that it is so expensive because they are a PBC and support open-source development. As in if they were just for profit it would be cheaper, but we should feel good about paying more. I could not take it.
- Onawa 1y agoAs an admin and advocate for Posit Teams, Connect and Server filled a niche where a single admin could spin up infra and allow for anything deployable by end users without having to worry about scaling. It paid for itself in terms of scientists spinning up their own projects without having to provision server hardware, VMs, or anything else.
- incomplete 1y agohard no for me WRT positron... i managed a university's jupyterhub deployments for a while and we had faculty CLAMORING for this vs. Rstudio. the problem? the fact that you need a license to use. it's not OSS. you are not allowed to deploy this on a hosted/managed system: ``` Limitations 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. You may not alter, remove, or obscure any licensing, copyright, or other notices of the licensor in the software. Any use of the licensor's trademarks is subject to applicable law. ```
- hadley 1y agoWe're working on this! Education is really important to us so this is 100% a problem we want to solve.
- sharifhsn 1y agoHey, my university is setting up a JupyterHub deployment right now, and my coworker is in charge of it. Do you mind elaborating more on how you went about it, best practices, etc.?
- insane_dreamer 1y agoThey probably should have said “paying users”; then univ labs could use it but some commercial company couldn’t just host it and charge for it
- hadley 1y agoStudents also pay :)
- insane_dreamer 1y agothey don't pay the lab for use of the software
- hollowturtle 1y agoWow can't we escape the vscode fork black hole anymore right?
- n42 1y ago"Days Since Last VSCode Fork", when? this seems unmaintained https://dayssincelastvscodefork.com/ https://dayssincelastvscodefork.com/
- 90s_dev 1y agoTo be fair, the Monaco team did an amazing thing. It's not clear to me just how much of VS Code's complexity is essential to its genius, but if anyone ever creates a slim version that does 90% of the work in 10% of the code, it would forever change editing like VS Code did. It would be great if it was portable too, but it's hard to get that without pulling in HTML + JS + CSS as dependencies. Maybe as a Dear ImGui extension?
- jmcphers 1y agoVS Code's complexity is due in large part to its extensibility. It has the biggest, most robust extension API of any modern editor. Extensions don't get to run on the main/UI thread but run in a separate process that communicates with the main window over RPCs. This necessitates a lot of plumbing and layered generics but makes the main UI fast/stable and was a key innovation over other editors at the time (cough Atom cough). The API is so good that a lot of core VS Code behavior (e.g. Github integration, support for lots of languages) is implemented in the form of built-in extensions. It is possible to get 80% of VS Code's functionality with 10-20% of the code if you just bake everything into one monolith, but this has been tried repeatedly and it keeps failing in part because the extension ecosystem and attendant network effects form a wide moat. (disclaimer - I work on Positron)
- notpushkin 1y agoCodeMirror is amazing these days, super lightweight compared to Monaco, and pretty extensible: https://codemirror.net/ https://codemirror.net/ (But that’s just the editor component, if you need all the other IDE stuff you’ll have to build it :-) For something non-browser, I’m currently using Zed and it’s pretty good: https://zed.dev/ https://zed.dev/
- throwaway328 1y agoEmacs is the only truly next-generation data science IDE, and the last-generation one too. (Hiding behind my couch after writing that)
- kleinishere 1y agoWhat packages and workflow specifically do you use? I haven’t come across many gentle introductions so looking for clues on what’s a reasonable first step that’s well maintained with good docs.
- throwaway328 1y agoI am not a scientist, and was primarily having a laugh with my comment. That said, I do know that the type of person who likes configuring things very in-depth can set up intricate and powerful workflows in Emacs. I don't know what kind of data science IDE specifically you're interested in putting together, but here's a general article: https://michaelneuper.com/posts/replace-jupyter-notebook-with-emacs-org-mode/ https://michaelneuper.com/posts/replace-jupyter-notebook-wit... There's also this MOOC on reproducible research in French and English from Inria, where you're encouraged to follow the course in one of three ways: Jupyter, RStudio, or in Emacs' Org-Mode. I'd love to do it, but can't really justify spending the time at the minute. https://www.fun-mooc.fr/en/courses/reproducible-research-methodological-principles-transparent-scie/ https://www.fun-mooc.fr/en/courses/reproducible-research-met... Creator of org-mode is Carsten Dominik, who is an astronomer by trade, so, it's a scientist's tool. A few of his talks are listed on this page, if you're interested in going straight to the source: https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/ https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/
- kleinishere 1y agoThis is great - thank you! Hadn't seen the blog post or the MOOC. Appreciate the resources.
- Koshcheiushko 1y agoCan you elaborate, how?
- joshmarinacci 1y agoIs this a rebrand of R-Studio?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- juliasilge 1y agoI work on Positron, and I would say no, it's a different product that has a different set of tradeoffs than RStudio. RStudio is a different IDE, and it is not going anywhere; our company is committed to long term support for it. I would say that Positron is better for folks who use more than one language (not only R) or want to customize/extend their IDE in a way that is not possible in RStudio.
- joshmarinacci 1y agoFascinating. Thank you for the quick reply!
- 7thaccount 1y agoThis looks exactly like the Spyder IDE that comes with Anaconda and WinPython. You get. Code editor, repl, variable inspector, and inline charts. Everything you need.
- juliasilge 1y agoI work on Positron, and I would say that Spyder can be a great choice for someone doing data science who uses Python only. I would argue that Positron is a better choice for people who use more than one language during their regular work (Python + C, Python + Rust, Python + JavaScript, etc) or who want a more customizable, extensible IDE.
- 7thaccount 1y agoThank you for the extra context. Best of luck on your project. I might check it out if I ever need something like Spyder with a different language.
- binarymax 1y agoThe interesting thing to me is that another company is adopting the Elastic license.
- mdaniel 1y agoThere seems to be a GH discussion wherein they explain the choice: https://github.com/posit-dev/positron/discussions/3820 https://github.com/posit-dev/positron/discussions/3820 If you find that interesting, there are actually quite a few others https://github.com/airbytehq/airbyte-platform/blob/main/LICENSE#L1 https://github.com/airbytehq/airbyte-platform/blob/main/LICE... https://github.com/apollographql/federation/blob/main/LICENSE#L7 https://github.com/apollographql/federation/blob/main/LICENS... https://github.com/PeerDB-io/peerdb/blob/main/LICENSE.md https://github.com/PeerDB-io/peerdb/blob/main/LICENSE.md
- qsort 1y agoI don't want to dunk too hard on this as it seems to be reasonably well made, but how are we making a data science IDE without a good SQL client? I might be biased but that's a major part of the workflow. You're already losing against PyCharm or Visual Studio (not code, the real one) simply because of that. I appreciate that full IDEs are heavy tools, but when I just need an editor I go with vim, if I have to do real work why not take out the power tools?
- notnmeyer 1y agoit looks like it is based on vsc. there’s got to be a decent sql client extension, right?
- NeutralForest 1y agoThen why use this instead of VSCode with a couple extensions?
- jmcphers 1y agoYou can in fact get something "pretty close" to Positron by adding and configuring a whole bunch of VS Code extensions, adjusting the layout, etc. However it's fiddly and time-consuming work (and quite challenging for novice users); the resulting UX can be pretty disjointed, too. Positron provides a batteries-included experience that lets you work with Python and R out of the box; it's easier to get started, everything's already set up for data work, and the tools all work together smoothly. At least, that's the goal. :-) (disclaimer - I work on Positron)
- NeutralForest 1y agoI honestly don't think it's enough of a value proposition but I wish you the best, more competition is good!
- samuell 1y ago
- hatmatrix 1y agoCan this connect to WSL like VSCode?
- jmcphers 1y agoSupport isn't built-in, but there is a third party extension that many folks have used successfully. https://open-vsx.org/extension/kv9898/open-remote-wsl https://open-vsx.org/extension/kv9898/open-remote-wsl
- malcolmgreaves 1y agoThis is just a clone of Spyder, which has been around for well over a decade: https://www.spyder-ide.org/ https://www.spyder-ide.org/
- juliasilge 1y agoI work on Positron, and I would say that it isn't a clone of Spyder, but rather a fork of VS Code that is very inspired by RStudio (also built by our company). Spyder takes a lot of inspiration from RStudio, and I would say that Spyder can be a great choice for someone doing data science who uses Python only. I would argue that Positron is a better choice for people who use more than one language during their regular work (Python + C, Python + Rust, Python + JavaScript, etc) or who want a more customizable, extensible IDE.
- greazy 1y agoI have been testing this IDE as I'm a heavy user of Rstudio. On Linux it's slow and buggy unfortunately. It's improving though.
- splittydev 1y agoGreat, another VS Code fork that could realistically just be an extension.
- flusteredBias 1y agoI use it and like it.
- positron26 1y agoGave me a heart attack that someone was posting my site overnight while I wasn't ready for launch :D... But thanks for adrenaline spike. Now I can start my morning.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- gclawes 1y agoIs VS Code/VSCodium becoming the Chromium of IDEs?
- georgeg 1y agoThis tool and ecosystem does not support Julia. I would expect that at this stage a data science polyglot tool is not just R and Python. Not sure why they would not support Julia.
- dist-epoch 1y agoJulia never got traction, and now it's on decline.
- juliasilge 1y agoI work on Positron and we are tracking interest in that here, if you would like to add a thumbs up or additional info: https://github.com/posit-dev/positron/issues/3679 https://github.com/posit-dev/positron/issues/3679
- pks016 1y agoI'm a daily user of R with R studio (academia) and also use Python in VS code. Tried posit a couple of months ago, but it wasn't stable as daily driver. Not all packages were there. Might have to try again soon. I have different specific habits for R and Python. Think it'll take a bit of time for people like me to switch. For a week, I also tried R in VS code, but something wasn't feeling right. I excited for the connections-pane if it works smoothly
- iJohnDoe 1y agoI have a project that I want to do something with - a JSON file with about 500k lines. I want to present the data in a clear way and struggling to find the right approach. Maybe an obvious answer to this, but I’m not a data scientist.
- pplonski86 1y agoI think you can easily load JSON data into Pandas DataFrame. Then you can create visualizations and compute statistics. Python might be usefule for that.
- samuell 1y ago... and if you (the parent comment author) wants a really easy tool for creating a UI for the Python code, I'd recommend looking at Streamlit: https://streamlit.io/ https://streamlit.io/
- clatan 1y agoNot a fan of abandoning Rstudio notebooks in favor of jupyter i always found them inferior.
- jsilence 1y agoMaybe consider evaluating Marimo?
- kookamamie 1y agoIs there a reason this couldn't have been an extension to VS Code?
- nQQKTz7dm27oZ 1y ago[dead]
- juliasilge 1y agoI work on Positron and we explain a bit about this here: https://positron.posit.co/faqs.html#why-build-a-new-ide-rather-than-vs-code-extensions https://positron.posit.co/faqs.html#why-build-a-new-ide-rath... tl;dr is that we build a lot of extensions ourselves and are familiar with what you can/can't do with it. Our goals around a data science IDE require more fully integrated experience that isn't possible with the VS Code extension API.
- ishita159 1y agoI don't get the hype.
- ezst 1y agoIt doesn't look like it supports Scala, unfortunately.
- HSO 1y agoHas anyone compared this with DataSpell? Relative pros and cons?
- yannis7 1y agobriefly reminded me of my MATLAB days... back in the 2000s/early-2010s it was all the rage. Great IDE too
- angelgonzales 1y agoI use Spyder daily for data analysis, plotting and preparing presentations. Does Positron have any improvements over Spyder? I’m not a “programmer” at all and love to use basic IDEs to analyze telemetry generated from testing.
- juliasilge 1y agoI work on Positron and I'll chime in! If you only use Python (not any other languages) and you are happy with Spyder, then Positron might not be compelling as something for you to switch to. If you ever find yourself using additional programming languages for your work or you want a more customizable, extensible IDE, then you might consider taking a look at it; I don't expect it would be an onerous switch coming from Spyder.
- vovavili 1y agoWeird that they've switched from Qt for RStudio to being a VSCode fork with Positron. RStudio was so loved precisely because it was lightweight and performant, which just isn't a possibility with something like VSCode.
- bb86754 1y agoRStudio is still a web app. It's GWT with QtWebEngine whereas this is Electron. Not too different.
- more0RLess 1y agoRStudio Desktop moved to Electron several years ago, and no longer uses Qt/QtWebEngine. (I'm a developer who works on the RStudio IDE for Posit and was heavily involved in the move to Electron)
- PontingClarke 1y ago[dead]
- luke-stanley 1y agoPositron: Consider starting with Astral UV! Fast and reproducible, with early fixes to evade CUDA dependency hell.