RCall.jl VS TidyverseSkeptic

I don't use it personally, but RCall.jl[1] is the main R interop package in Julia. You could call libraries that have no equivalent in Julia using that and write your own analyses in Julia instead.

[1] https://github.com/JuliaInterop/RCall.jl

You can have your cake and eat it with the likes of

* PythonCall.jl - https://github.com/cjdoris/PythonCall.jl

* NodeCall.jl - https://github.com/sunoru/NodeCall.j

* RCall.jl - https://github.com/JuliaInterop/RCall.jl

I tend to use Julia for most things and then just dip into another language’s ecosystem if I can’t find something to do the job and it’s too complex to build myself

To inter-operate Julia with the R language, the RCall package is used. Run the following commands on the Julia REPL

https://github.com/JuliaInterop/RCall.jl may help

If you need to bindings to your existing R packages then Julia is the way. Check out RCall.jl

I have no experience with R, but maybe this will be of use: https://github.com/JuliaInterop/RCall.jl

You can use RCall to use R from Julia: https://github.com/JuliaInterop/RCall.jl

I worked with R and Python during the last 3 years but learning and dabbling with Julia since 0.6. Since the availability of [PyCall.jl] and [RCall.jl], the transition to Julia can already be easier for Python/R users.

I agree that most of the time data wrangling is super confortable in R due to the syntax flexibility exploited by the big packages (tidyverse/data.table/etc). At the same time, Julia and R share a bigger heritage from Lisp influence that with Python, because R is also a Lisp-ish language (see [Advanced R, Metaprogramming]). My main grip from the R ecosystem is not that most of the perfomance sensitive packages are written in C/C++/Fortran but are written so deeply interconnect with the R environment that porting them to Julia that provide also an easy and good interface to C/C++/Fortran (and more see [Julia Interop] repo) seems impossible for some of them.

I also think that Julia reach to broader scientific programming public than R, where it overlaps with Python sometimes but provides the Matlab/Octave public with an better alternative. I don't expected to see all the habits from those communities merge into Julia ecosystem. On the other side, I think that Julia bigger reach will avoid to fall into the "base" vs "tidyverse" vs "something else in-between" that R is now.

[PyCall.jl]: https://github.com/JuliaPy/PyCall.jl

[RCall.jl]: https://github.com/JuliaInterop/RCall.jl

[Julia Interop]: https://github.com/JuliaInterop

[Advanced R, Metaprogramming] by Hadley Wickham: https://adv-r.hadley.nz/metaprogramming.html

I just don't get these to be honest -- besides the fact that author missed simple things like `df.groupby('var',as_index=False)`, isn't this obviously arbitrary "this is easier my way" complaints? (I did R before all the chaining stuff was popular, and I wouldn't stuff everything into a single command like that even now. It isn't like you get lazy evaluation or any special data processing magic.)

So I get people love chaining and tidyverse, good for you, I don't. But at least I can acknowledge that my way (or this way) people have different preferences and one is not intrinsically easier.

Norm Matloff has a blog where he essentially just argues the opposite of all the tidyverse stuff, https://github.com/matloff/TidyverseSkeptic, but it is the same idea in reverse to me (one is not obviously easier to learn than the other IMO).

On the other hand, there is also a more traditional universe outside of the of the newer tidyverse approach. See the criticism of the tidyverse ecosystem by Prof Norm Matloff (of UC Davis). He provides a freely available introductory course in base R.

Whenever I hear tidyverse, I just feel the need to leave this: TidyverseSceptic

Yeah, I had never heard of him before, but I followed the link in the article above to his GitHub page and think he made some really great points about conciseness and clarity in base R code, and, I admittedly had no idea tapply() was so useful and easy to use, because I almost never see it used in any examples online. Although I agree with others here that he's misrepresenting why package developers use base R (which is to avoid dependences in their packages, which is very important), I also find myself agreeing with him that future R programmers not being taught base R is worrisome (I'm thinking of dependencies in future package development).

I was in an R group meeting. One of the members mentioned Prof. Norm Matloff and said he has comments about tidyverse. I searched and found Matloff's explanation here. What are your thoughts on tidyverse and Matloff's comments about it? As I read it, I found myself agreeing with certain points. I do not have a computer science background; I'm someone trying to learn coding because I see uses for it in my work. I started my learning, about a year ago, with tidyverse tutorials. My patchwork jumping around, maybe in addition to some of the gaps Matloff indicates, show me that I know very little about base R.

There are good arguments against tidyverse, especially for beginners. It doesn't lead to a growth in understanding the language fundamentals and requires to learn many functions, paradigms, and syntaxes not shared by base R, which can easily be overwhelming and lead to a learn-by-heart approach more than to a learn-by-understanding. There are many good articles on the topic, such as this one or a more in-depth one, suggesting to consider tidyverse a more advanced application for specific use cases, if you like the dialect. I don't, so I might be biased.

I would discourage you to get into the tidyverse, at least in the first stages of your R training. It's like trying to learn english AND scottish together as a foreigner. You can read some better worded discussions here https://github.com/matloff/TidyverseSkeptic and here https://towardsdatascience.com/a-thousand-gadgets-my-thoughts-on-the-r-tidyverse-2441d8504433?gi=1b0a3648b6e6

My opinions are largely in agreement with Norm Matloff on the subject actually.