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by peatmoss 2025 days ago
R vs. Python flamewars always strike me as a Budweiser vs. Miller kind of argument. Neither is really a “craft beer” of programming languages. Neither are super remarkable as programming languages. Both made a bunch pragmatic tradeoffs to appeal to large audiences that share similar values—both are “average joe” beers.

Python has comparative advantages over R in production roles. R has comparative advantage in statistical libraries, visualization, and meta programming. Neither are exemplars for production deployment or meta programming (R is an exemplar for stats libraries however).

2 comments

Tidyverse absolutely has a hipster craft beer feel to it. I think it's great, but it's true.
There is nothing more hip than library(tidyverse) that I've found in python.
I'm really into this package that lets you manipulate tabular data using dozens of different systems with the exact same code

Yeah, you've probably never heard of it