from Hacker News

Maker of RStudio launches new R and Python IDE

by javierluraschi on 6/27/24, 9:05 PM with 128 comments

• by gepost on 6/28/24, 1:04 AM

  What is the strategy behind the dizzying pace of product changes in the R/Python space? I heard that RStudio was a great product, yet they have to redo everything again, of course also renaming the company as is also standard practice in the Python "scientific" market.

  Is it Jupyter envy? Why is it not possible to keep one good product and stay with it?

  I wish MatLab licenses weren't so expensive, at this point I'd just buy one and sit all this churn out.

• by SassyBird on 6/28/24, 9:53 AM

  Are they going to drop RStudio? I very much prefer its Qt interface over whatever VSCode invented. It’s fast, has nice keyboard shortcuts, none of that pointless padding and it just feels great to use.

• by teruakohatu on 6/27/24, 11:10 PM

  This looks great, combining the best of VSCode and RStudio.

  I prefer coding in VSCode but prefer data exploration in RStudio.

  One issue with this is the lack of copilot. Copilot can be installed on VSCodium [1] but it breaks often. The other is MS’s proprietary Remove Development extension that enables a lot of functionality in VSCode. There is an open equivalent but I haven’t tried it [2]

  [1] https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/discussions/1487

  [2] https://open-vsx.org/extension/jeanp413/open-remote-ssh

• by legobmw99 on 6/28/24, 2:45 AM

  It seems a little odd to me that this is not just… a vscode extension pack?

• by josephcsible on 6/28/24, 1:31 AM

  Warning: This is released under the Elastic License, which for obvious reasons is neither free software nor open source:

  > You may not provide the software to third parties as a hosted or managed service, where the service provides users with access to any substantial set of the features or functionality of the software.

  > You may not move, change, disable, or circumvent the license key functionality in the software, and you may not remove or obscure any functionality in the software that is protected by the license key.

  https://github.com/posit-dev/positron/blob/main/LICENSE.txt

• by bluenose69 on 6/28/24, 8:42 AM

  I would expect a bit more backwards compatibility for R packages. When I open a package.Rproj file with RStudio, it has GUI elements to build the package, to test it, etc.

  When I open it with positron, it is treated like a text file, at least as far as I can tell by looking at the many icons and pulldown menus.

  It is a weird choice, making a new application that cannot handle the key file type from its ancestor.

• by kleiba on 6/27/24, 10:29 PM

  Speaking of which: does anyone here on HN feel comfortable recommending a Python IDE that's half-way bearable on iPads?

• by justinclift on 6/28/24, 5:46 AM

  Just noticed this:

      Because Microsoft does not allow third-party IDEs to access the official VS Code
      Marketplace ...
  

  Anyone know why?

  My wild guess is it means MS doesn't want third parties to build their own VS Code based IDEs (like this one)?

• by pjmlp on 6/28/24, 8:33 AM

  Visual Studio Code is the new Eclipse it seems, now everyone and their dog are shipping IDE distributions that are just re-packing plugins.

• by darkteflon on 6/28/24, 5:23 AM

  Relatedly, has anyone found a really good extension for interacting with .tsv, .csv, files in VS Code? PyCharm is much nicer on that front.

• by rldjbpin on 6/30/24, 9:19 AM

  having used rstudio academically, the new ide looks like a refreshed version of it, which happens to come with the familiar vs code sidebar.

  personally, i see the value of rstudio (and in extension positron) while learning in a course, but i struggle to find its place beyond data exploration.

  despite the licensing stuff, if they can provide some based defaults (removing microsoft telemetry "sauce"), it can be an ergonomic way to bring math-sided team members to share the same development platform.

• by conradolandia on 6/28/24, 4:13 PM

  Spyder-IDE is a better option