Advantages of Using R Notebooks Instead of Jupyter Notebooks (2017)

#1

Post by breckuh » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 12:25 AM UTC

Advantages of Using R Notebooks Instead of Jupyter Notebooks (2017)
minimaxir.com

Re: Advantages of Using R Notebooks Instead of Jupyter Notebooks (2017)

#2

Post by stephengillie » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 4:18 AM UTC

Bit of a typo in the title. Original: Advantages of Using R Notebooks For Data Analysis Instead of Jupyter Notebooks

Re: Advantages of Using R Notebooks Instead of Jupyter Notebooks (2017)

#3

Post by peatmoss » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 4:26 AM UTC

R notebooks behave similarly to org-mode, albeit with fewer supported languages and a few less options for controlling execution and value passing between code blocks. Org-mode is the oldest and most powerful environment of this sort that I know of.

That said, for new users, I think R Notebooks are less daunting than Emacs + org-mode.

Like most things associated with RStudio and the Tidyverse, I feel that they’ve really done their homework. Even if org-mode does more, I feel it’s pretty evident that R Notebooks at least made an effort to understand org-mode’s prior art.

Re: Advantages of Using R Notebooks Instead of Jupyter Notebooks (2017)

#4

Post by radmuzom » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 4:46 AM UTC

A really good article on notebooks is the blog post by Yihui Xie - https://yihui.name/en/2018/09/notebook-war/.

Re: Advantages of Using R Notebooks Instead of Jupyter Notebooks (2017)

#5

Post by closed » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 4:47 AM UTC

RE python in Rmarkdown being limited...

> The Python session ends after the cell executes, making it unhelpful for tasks other than ad hoc scripts.

This isn't the case anymore thanks to the reticulate library.

https://blog.rstudio.com/2018/03/26/reticulate-r-interface-t...

Re: Advantages of Using R Notebooks Instead of Jupyter Notebooks (2017)

#6

Post by laichzeit0 » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 5:34 AM UTC

It’s just that RStudio’s vim support is so extremely bad, compared to VSCode or even the Jupyter Notebook vim plug-in. I guess this won’t bother you if you don’t have a developer background, but I find that editing code in RStudio is a real pain.

I wish I could use RStudio with the exact same keybindings and vim behavior as Jupyter in the browser. That alone would make things bearable. Like the exact same keys for cell execution, adding new cells, etc. Call it “Jupyter mode”.

Re: Advantages of Using R Notebooks Instead of Jupyter Notebooks (2017)

#7

Post by scoot_718 » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 6:36 AM UTC

* You get enjoy a language with incompatible interfaces for every single data structure.

* Write-only language ensures your ideas are difficult to steal

Re: Advantages of Using R Notebooks Instead of Jupyter Notebooks (2017)

#8

Post by gaius » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 6:49 AM UTC

Working in RMarkdown it is super-easy to generate a publishable document from your research. Whereas there is still no good Jupyter—>PDF solution.

Re: Advantages of Using R Notebooks Instead of Jupyter Notebooks (2017)

#9

Post by usgroup » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 6:54 AM UTC

I’ve moved to Orgmode Babel for all my notebook needs. Work straight out of emacs, exports to many formats, literate programming, supports dozens of languages.

Previously used R notebooks exclusively for all the benefits author mentioned.

Re: Advantages of Using R Notebooks Instead of Jupyter Notebooks (2017)

#10

Post by okket » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 7:06 AM UTC

Previous discussion from a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14522795 (70 comments)