Plotnine

Post by williamcotton » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 4:28 PM UTC

stared wrote: post #48

williamcotton wrote: post #23

I've always liked the ggplot2 and the Grammar of Graphics approach to plotting so much so that I wrote my own DSL based on it - it is standalone, written in Rust, has WASM bindings (as you can see on the website) and more: https://williamcotton.github.io/algraf It pairs well with a related data translation DSL: https://williamcotton.github.io/pdl And you can see the two working together here: https://williamcotton.gi…

A year ago, added R to the pipeline (with multiple complications) just to use ggplot2 - even though Python was the main tech. https://quesma.com/blog/sandboxing-ai-generated-code-why-we-... Good, that ggplot2 can run inside in WASM, vide https://github.com/QuesmaOrg/webr-ggplot-playground

  $ which ggplot
  ggplot () {
          if [[ "$1" == "-f" ]]
          then
                  shift
                  rush run --library tidyverse "$(cat "$1")" -
          else
                  rush run --library tidyverse "$@" -
          fi
  }

  $ echo "one,two,three\n1,2,3\n4,5,6\n,7,8,9" | ggplot 'ggplot(df, aes(one, two)) + geom_col() + theme_minimal()' | imgcat

Post by epgui » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 4:36 PM UTC

jllyhill wrote: post #47

icarusz wrote: post #43

matplotlib is what most folks reach for by default, but I'd argue that's habit and popularity talking, not a real fit advantage. For a lot of plotting work, the grammar-of-graphics libraries — Altair, plotnine — may be the better tool for many people (and Agents); they just don't have the muscle memory behind them. (Disclosure: I'm at Posit, which supports plotnine.)

What would you say are the benefits of the grammar-of-graphics approach? I've been working with plotting for more than a decade now and have never heard of it. Right now I'm looking through the gallery and can't really grasp what makes this approach better than the one in matplotlib. PS. It took someone in the comments writing "import plotnine as p9" for me to understand it isn't plotLine.

Post by mathisfun123 » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 4:39 PM UTC

seanhunter wrote: post #26

Plotnine has been great in my usage, but I see violin plots on the front page. Just say no to violin plots. In almost any situation you either want to talk about the actual distribution (in which case plotting the distribution on one side of the line arranged horizontally is significantly superior to plotting it vertically on both sides of the line for some reason as a violin plot does[1]) or you want to talk about t…

Post by icarusz » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 5:19 PM UTC

icarusz wrote: post #49

jllyhill wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you say are the benefits of the grammar-of-graphics approach? I've been working with plotting for more than a decade now and have never heard of it. Right now I'm looking through the gallery and can't really grasp what makes this approach better than the one in matplotlib. PS. It took someone in the comments writing "import plotnine as p9" for me to understand it isn't plotLine.

It has to do with the structure of the information/inputs. Its more a DSL with a structure rather than a jumble of API arguments. So first few times out it may take some getting used to, but as that structure becomes clear it becomes more intuitive. Thats also why even with way more matplotlib examples in the world, LLM agents do better "guessing" how to use plotnine... or at least it was that way a few months ago wh…

Post by theLiminator » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 6:37 PM UTC