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Lets-plot: An interactive Python plotting library using ggplot's API

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Re: Lets-plot: An interactive Python plotting library using ggplot's API

#11

Post by crispyambulance »

neves wrote: post #6

I've been a Python lover for decades. I dislike a lot of characteristics of the R language, but the ggplot2 package is superior to anything in Python visualization space. It is really excellent.

Wickham was really on to something with ggplot and it's graphical grammar concept for plots. That and Tidyverse in general, I believe, has saved R from irrelevance.

I wish more projects would use that way of thinking but it seems that in the jupyter/julia/python world there's too many choices and they all attempt a "kitchen-sink" approach for visualization.

Re: Lets-plot: An interactive Python plotting library using ggplot's API

#12

Post by bransonf »

crispyambulance wrote: post #11
neves wrote: post #6

I've been a Python lover for decades. I dislike a lot of characteristics of the R language, but the ggplot2 package is superior to anything in Python visualization space. It is really excellent.

Wickham was really on to something with ggplot and it's graphical grammar concept for plots. That and Tidyverse in general, I believe, has saved R from irrelevance. I wish more projects would use that way of thinking but it seems that in the jupyter/julia/python world there's too many choices and they all attempt a "kitchen-sink" approach for visualization.

> Tidyverse in general, I believe, has saved R from irrelevance.

It’s interesting that you say this. I’ve been using R daily for almost 3 years now, and I was originally taught the Tidyverse.

However, I also tutored in biostats and have collaborated with many different faculty and students.

On one hand the Tidyverse created an opening for R learners especially, but it has lead to some controversy as well.

Trust me when I say there are plenty of R users who have never heard of or used the Tidyverse.

It leads to some difficulty in teaching/collaborating because do I use grepl or str_detect? lapply or map? Do they know the magrittr syntax (%>%)?

Then there’s non-standard evaluation, which often forces some arbitrary meta-programming on novice programmers.

R is foremost the stats language, and tidyverse has attempted to make it more general purpose, for better or worse depending on who you ask.

Re: Lets-plot: An interactive Python plotting library using ggplot's API

#13

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

crispyambulance wrote: post #11
neves wrote: post #6

I've been a Python lover for decades. I dislike a lot of characteristics of the R language, but the ggplot2 package is superior to anything in Python visualization space. It is really excellent.

Wickham was really on to something with ggplot and it's graphical grammar concept for plots. That and Tidyverse in general, I believe, has saved R from irrelevance. I wish more projects would use that way of thinking but it seems that in the jupyter/julia/python world there's too many choices and they all attempt a "kitchen-sink" approach for visualization.

Honestly, R will be fine, even apart from tidyverse.

There's a huge shadow universe of scientists running particular R packages for these analyses, which never gets seen from HN/programmers.

While Python is definitely (sadly, IMO) a better language for building ML systems (because more people know it, and it's harder to write impenetrable code), R is definitely a better DSL for statistical analysis, modelling and graphics.

It's a shame that R takes its lineage from a language developed in the 70's (S), as that's a cause of many of the inconsistencies in the core language.

Re: Lets-plot: An interactive Python plotting library using ggplot's API

#14

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

bransonf wrote: post #12
crispyambulance wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wickham was really on to something with ggplot and it's graphical grammar concept for plots. That and Tidyverse in general, I believe, has saved R from irrelevance. I wish more projects would use that way of thinking but it seems that in the jupyter/julia/python world there's too many choices and they all attempt a "kitchen-sink" approach for visualization.

> Tidyverse in general, I believe, has saved R from irrelevance. It’s interesting that you say this. I’ve been using R daily for almost 3 years now, and I was originally taught the Tidyverse. However, I also tutored in biostats and have collaborated with many different faculty and students. On one hand the Tidyverse created an opening for R learners especially, but it has lead to some controversy as well. Trust me wh…

Tidyverse is much, much harder to write functions for, which is pretty bad for beginners. The API is lovely, but the non-standard evaluation causes real problems for people.

True story: writing tidyverse functions is so hard that I once worked for a company with business critical code running in incredibly long R-scripts with almost no functions, and 100 line pipes.

While that may be an extreme example, base-R is much, much easier to get started writing functions for (like I've been using R for a decade now, and the "idiomatic" way to use NSE with ggplot and dplyr has changed multiple times over that time).

Meanwhile, base-R is fugly, but its solid and backwards-compatible to a fault.

Re: Lets-plot: An interactive Python plotting library using ggplot's API

#15

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

iav wrote: post #9
gimboland wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a cursory glance at both projects, it looks like plotnine doesn't do interactivity, for a start?

I wonder why they decided to start from scratch in Kotlin rather than just add the interactivity feature to plotnine. Now we have two competing projects...

I'm pretty sure that there have been multiple attempts to recreate ggplot in python.

I can think of 3-4 off the top of my head.

Re: Lets-plot: An interactive Python plotting library using ggplot's API

#17

Post by sandGorgon »

Do try Altair. Here's a post from someone who comes from ggplot2 to Altair - http://fernandoi.cl/blog/posts/altair/

here's the path to Altair scrapping 20k lines of code to make the api simpler - https://twitter.com/jakevdp/status/1006929128119926786

Altair is really good. Probably as good as ggplot2

Re: Lets-plot: An interactive Python plotting library using ggplot's API

#18

Post by xioxox »

c06n wrote: post #10
neves wrote: post #6

I've been a Python lover for decades. I dislike a lot of characteristics of the R language, but the ggplot2 package is superior to anything in Python visualization space. It is really excellent.

Depends, it does not do interactive 3D-plots. For that, Plotly is the only performant lib I know.

Have a go with the Veusz package (I'm lead author). It does interactive 3D plots, has a GUI and Python interface. I think the 3D speed is reasonable (providing the BSP clipping isn't switched on).

http://veusz.github.io/

Re: Lets-plot: An interactive Python plotting library using ggplot's API

#19

Post by theandycamps »

I've been using R professionally for 4 years. I've been a Python programmer for 6 years. I've shipped large scale applications built on both languages to production.

Findings:

I honestly don't get the hype around R's plotting capabilities. ggplot2 is nice, but far too magical to be easily understood by beginners.

Python offers more intuitive memory management than R (which is really more a statement on how bad R is at memory efficiency).

R blows Python out of the water when it comes to expressing concise and readable linear algebra/stats computation. Done right, base R looks like mathematical pseudo-code.

R's non-standard evaluation is an under-appreciated killer feature. I've seen complex and powerful DSLs implemented implemented in base R. Python has some support for this kind of thing, but nowhere near the level of R.

I tried the Tidyverse and found it to be too magical and unstable. In general, the R package ecosystem is weird. Look at Stack Overflow and you'll find people touting all sorts of different packages to do simple operations. Needing to download a million random packages from grad students of the internet is a recipe for disaster.

Re: Lets-plot: An interactive Python plotting library using ggplot's API

#20

Post by prionassembly »

theandycamps wrote: post #19

I've been using R professionally for 4 years. I've been a Python programmer for 6 years. I've shipped large scale applications built on both languages to production. Findings: I honestly don't get the hype around R's plotting capabilities. ggplot2 is nice, but far too magical to be easily understood by beginners. Python offers more intuitive memory management than R (which is really more a statement on how bad R is a…

Do you have any insights on Julia?
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