[R] Some general comments

[Jeff Newmiller]

Would you prefer that R be static?

If you don't like the dependency hell of certain packages, then perhaps those packages are not appropriate for you. You always have the option to create your own packages... and in nearly all cases the licenses of contributed packages allow you to re-formulate their code into your own packages.

Do be clear... contributed packages are not "R". R Core bears no responsibility for the decisions made by package developers in making progress on those packages. 

I am curious what you are drifting _toward_... Python has had some dramatic changes in syntax over time... so much so that using Python without a version-pinned virtual environment is hardly possible. You have support for that approach in R also. I suspect that any open scripting tool will have similar problems... if one tool doesn't have that problem now, it will later.

On June 13, 2025 7:49:37 AM EDT, Small Investor via R-help <r-help using r-project.org> wrote:
>Dear R community,
>I have been using R for over 15 years. I want to raise an issue which has been haunting me for some time now: It feels as if R is falling apart. I try to justify this feeling by providing three discussion points:
>1. Version compatibility issues seem to be on the rise. Very often, you get the message that package x was built on R version y (and thus, won't work in your version of R). When you update to the latest version of R, you realize that not all packages are available for that version. It seems that for each version, only a (non-predictable) subset of packages is available.
>2. The overhead of installing new packages seems to be on the rise. It seems that the packages depend on more and more other packages. The more packages you have in the 'foundations' of package x, the more likely it is that one of these causes an error and the whole stack fails. Installing used to be easy back in the day: You got a 20 lines' output. Now you get endless prints. I may be mistaken but some packages seem to require admin rights on your computer which you don't often have on your work PC.
>3. R seems to be developing into different dialects. You have dplyr and tidyr, some people prefer data frames, some prefer tibbles. Some people use pipes, some use traditional syntax. Some prefer object-oriented programs, some prefer procedural scripts. If you put in a job announcement that somebody has to know R, it doesn't mean the same thing for different people.
>If you compare the use experience of R in 2025 to that of Matlab, the difference is striking: Matlab is concise and clear, R is more and more about endless prints. Of course, Matlab is a commerical product, but R used to be the same way. I don't know if many other people feel the same way, but I think I am shifting away from R.
>yours best,a data analyst dude
>
>	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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-- 
Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.