Mastodawn

For those in the #rstats world, have you migrated from #rstudio to #positron? I am finally trying Positron; love the auto dark mode, which I previously had to use a script to do in rstudio. and it seems to be executing code fine using the here() package to point to files in a directory. What are your thoughts? Excited to see about Python where I was using a mix of the Rstudio/reticulate and Spyder that never worked the way I wanted.

Dr. Dan Killam Jan 23

I now have opened a python project, set it successfully (and quickly!) to a particular environment and remade some analyses!

My next test will be to do some Python spatial stuff and see if it shrieks something about wheels at me and explodes

Dr. Dan Killam Mar 5

For over a month I have been using #positron. In most cases it is pretty much living the dream of working with R and Python from the same directory simultaneously! I like how it handles Git. I also now have the full universe of VS Code extensions available! There are some little things that Rstudio still handles better. For example, some piped tidyverse code does not carry indents to the next line correctly for some reason. It can be used to develop shiny apps honestly easier than Rstudio, but it doesn't have the convenient shinyapps.io publishing GUI (I think?). I haven't done rMarkdown work with it yet, so I can't say whether they've achieved feature parity there. But it sure is convenient being able to work in both languages from one IDE!

Bill, organizer of stuff Mar 6

@dantheclamman This was one of the things I loved about working in a notebook-style environment like Zeppelin or Databricks. The ability to seamlessly swap between languages while passing context & data structures between them.

Josep Pueyo-Ros

@dantheclamman I've never come back to #Rstudio. The migration is totally worthy. I used pycharm for python because I have an academic license, but I also moved to #positron. Much more prepared for data science.

Bernard Forgues ☮︎Jan 23

@dantheclamman No. I’ve tried it a few times but can’t see a compelling reason to learn a new IDE. To be fair I’m not using python much.

Stephen Royle Jan 23

@dantheclamman I was thinking of posting the exact same thing this week. Unsure about making the switch as I really like RStudio, while I've not settled on an IDE I like for python. I'm not sure what the future of RStudio is... are posit going to continue with it?

Dr. Dan Killam Jan 23

@steveroyle I think Rstudio is being de-prioritized, but not officially a legacy product or demoted to maintenance mode https://www.reddit.com/r/rstats/comments/1pda6p6/rstudio_in_maintenance_mode/

Louis Aslett Jan 24

@dantheclamman @steveroyle The latest Posit AI newsletter indicates brand new features coming for RStudio https://posit.co/blog/2026-01-16-ai-newsletter/

AI Newsletter 2026-01-16 - Posit

AI coming to RStudio, reflections on Claude Code + Opus 4.5, and agent harnesses.

Posit

@dantheclamman I did the full switch to Cursor. Occasionally I drop back to RStudio.

Virginicus Jan 23

@dantheclamman I’m what they call a “late adopter”. I’ll stick with Rstudio until I have a compelling need to switch.

Michael Sumner Jan 23

@dantheclamman I use both, mostly Positron to connect via ssh and use the assistant, same projects the old way via rstudio server, I love that both work at the same time

Barry Rowlingson Jan 23

@dantheclamman I'm sticking with free and open source tools, so that's a no to Positron.

Dr. Robert M Flight Jan 23

@dantheclamman I was a fairly early adopter, and I've been filing bugs as I come across them.

I use the "open folder" with another application on Linux to make it "just work" with my folder based projects.

My only real gripe still is that outlines in `targets::tar_assign` don't quite work yet.

Seeing Python help the exact same as R is amazeballs.

Zaom27⚡️Jan 23

@dantheclamman Just one thing: the projects. I know it's something subtle and you just have to change your mentality, but somehow, I miss them

Dr. Dan Killam Jan 23

@Zaom27 yes, I have grown to really think in projects, so that will be a big change. Fortunately it seems like the here package still works, which I wasn't sure would be the case. Another change is that I hear Rmarkdowns don't render the figures in-line anymore, which is a bummer