Timeline for If R were reprogrammed from scratch today, what changes would be most useful to the statistics community?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 11, 2021 at 21:46 | comment | added | Erik A | @user1717828 Of course you can. Will I ever be able to convince my colleagues to do so and archive docker images instead of scripts? Nope :( | |
| Jan 11, 2021 at 21:08 | comment | added | user1717828 | Python user nosing in. Forgive me if this is entirely stupid, but can you not run R in Docker to get reproducibility? | |
| Jan 11, 2021 at 20:49 | comment | added | Erik A | [2/2] If we look at Python, Conda fixes this issue by forcing users to run their stuff in an environment, and by easily generating a file listing all packages installed in that environment. It has its flaws too. What I'd truly like is a built-in way to use "environments", and without integration into R itself, we get stuff like Packrat, which would be nice if people would actually use it, but mostly is a hassle so no-one I know actually uses. While it could be integrated into R Studio instead of R that would make scripts dependent on an IDE which is usually a bad idea. | |
| Jan 11, 2021 at 20:42 | comment | added | Firebug | your example is exactly about packages though. An environment like in Python or Julia would solve everything. | |
| Jan 11, 2021 at 20:39 | comment | added | Erik A |
@Firebug [1/2] I mainly encounter this problem when using random scripts generated by colleagues months to years ago, not when using packages, so integration in packages wouldn't help me. The problem is: I want to do something. Colleague X has done that thing a year ago. I get his script. Try to run it, tons of errors. Worked for him in the past. I install checkpoint, checkpoint("2019-01-01"), less errors. Try different dates, never 0 errors. Hours of debugging later, apparently that colleague had a way outdated version of one specific package, and the script works.
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| Jan 11, 2021 at 19:06 | comment | added | Firebug | I don't think this needs a built-in solution (meaning that it could be incorporated in current R, no need for redesign). Just like Julia has Pkg Project.toml + Manifest.toml, and Python has pip requirements.txt, R could just as well have an environment solution to be used with CRAN registries. | |
| Jan 11, 2021 at 13:37 | history | answered | Erik A | CC BY-SA 4.0 |