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Announcing R Tools for Visual Studio

blogs.technet.microsoft.com

81–87 of 87 posts

Re: Announcing R Tools for Visual Studio

#81
post #9

Hi folks - Last year we polled HN on whether there'd be interest in R integration in Visual Studio. You said "YES!", so here it is! I'll be around in case you have any questions. BTW RTVS was built by the same group that made PTVS (Python Tools for VS) and NTVS (Node.js Tools for VS). RTVS will also be free & open source of course. Cheers

What does this actually mean for F# from an MS perspective?

F# first-party support isn't going anywhere. R and F# hit two different demographics. If there's one thing MS is excellent at - it's long term support. There are enough research and financial institutions that I'd bet my 401k F# support stays the course (maybe even doing to OCaml/SML/etc what C# did to Java).

Re: Announcing R Tools for Visual Studio

#82
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely prefer R to pandas, dyplr and tools were soo much easier to use for subsetting dataframes and dealing with them, initially I thought python might be better because it was supposed to be easier, but boy was I wrong.

Thanks for mentioning dyplr. I've been struggling with pandas (can a library be more convoluted?) and will definitely give R a go.

Yeah out all the assorted packages that go with that, tidyr too.

Here's a cheat sheet https://www.rstudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/data-wran...

Re: Announcing R Tools for Visual Studio

#83
Any plans for a 32 bit version? We need our 32 bit R studio install to be able to run in parallel with this as we test this and we cannot switch Java versions from 32 to 64 bit which some pkgs we use require. Congrats on the public release.

Re: Announcing R Tools for Visual Studio

#84
post #72

Personally never did R studio. Unfiltered command line is always more flexible, and prevents inertial lockin to a specific tool, OS, to a large extent. Now I'm supposed to do R in ultra-bloated Visual Studio?? I learned R precisely to get away from the inefficiency of the (in the past 20 years, functionally unchanged, visual-candy-only) Excel. How am I to be excited about adding this thick, lumpy MS gravy, to my pure…

I would be interested in a concrete example of how you found command line R in Linux to be superior? I personally use R with RStudio on Windows and on the command line in a Linux cluster. I have found no differences, and am happy to use either, but tend to use RStudio because it suits my workflow better. Memory management in command line R on Linux seems better, but I don't run into that issue very often.

The command line is not superficially superior if all you are doing all day is interactively exploring data using R. In that case, R-Studio puts a layer of convenience around the workflow. But, like all reasons that the command line refuses to die across multiple applications (not just R), and is indeed in rude health, wrappers have their downside. They lock you in. They're higher level (lower flexibility). Being a non-essential surrogate technology, they're more prone to abandonment by the developers, which entails more risk to users. They're not doable easily remotely.

Most importantly, if your workflow becomes IDE based, especially on graphics, then you will have a dearth of skills for implementing actual production code that does not rely on a local workstation running a local copy of the IDE in graphical environment. You'll be short of the understanding of how the plumbing works, limiting you to the exploration role of a single-user guy, and you'll limit the shareability of your work.

Sure, R-Studio is great. But no, it's not an absolute good. It's a tradeoff. Know what you're giving up. Personally, I like to use the most generic, widespread version of tools as possible. I can SSH into any computer anywhere and be running R within minutes, with full familiarity with the environment.

By the way, clearly I'm in the minority, and that's the problem. R itself is open source, but R-studio is not. Microsoft has clearly taken a view that they can buy a large part of the R ecosystem, by buying this tool. I consider this to be a bit of a hijack, and that is the last reason why I dislike R Studio -> it is a vector for undermining open source software and in this case, R itself as open to all. All of a sudden, a large (possibly majority) slice of the user base is beholden to a for-profit company and all its incentives. Not me.

Re: Announcing R Tools for Visual Studio

#85
post #42

Personally never did R studio. Unfiltered command line is always more flexible, and prevents inertial lockin to a specific tool, OS, to a large extent. Now I'm supposed to do R in ultra-bloated Visual Studio?? I learned R precisely to get away from the inefficiency of the (in the past 20 years, functionally unchanged, visual-candy-only) Excel. How am I to be excited about adding this thick, lumpy MS gravy, to my pure…

what phillc73 said. Totally respect having a focused command line w no frills workflow. To each their own. But you should really give RStudio a try. It's a beautiful, highly productive R IDE with many features that make writing R much much more pleasant.

Thank you for a balanced view. R studio is a great piece of software, and the command line also deserves respect.

Re: Announcing R Tools for Visual Studio

#86
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expand a bit on what the nature of integration with Excel might be?

Sure. It can go from very basic: * Right click on a data frame & "Open in Excel" (to view, chart, massage, etc.) but one way to something more elaborate like we did for PTVS/Pyvot (two way): * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu31s7kXPOg to * Using R as a scripting language in Excel, edited/debugged in RTVS (poke the Excel team pls ;)) to *

> Using R as a scripting language in Excel, edited/debugged in RTVS (poke the Excel team pls ;))

I imagine the Excel team is well aware of how embarrassingly weak the VBA language and Excel object model "quirkiness" is in the year 2016. I simply can't understand why they continue to let such a key platform languish.

Re: Announcing R Tools for Visual Studio

#87
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be interested in a concrete example of how you found command line R in Linux to be superior? I personally use R with RStudio on Windows and on the command line in a Linux cluster. I have found no differences, and am happy to use either, but tend to use RStudio because it suits my workflow better. Memory management in command line R on Linux seems better, but I don't run into that issue very often.

The command line is not superficially superior if all you are doing all day is interactively exploring data using R. In that case, R-Studio puts a layer of convenience around the workflow. But, like all reasons that the command line refuses to die across multiple applications (not just R), and is indeed in rude health, wrappers have their downside. They lock you in. They're higher level (lower flexibility). Being a n…

Great answer, thank you.
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