Tidyverse introduces plenty of breakages, and as noted elsewhere does relentlessly between its own versions. Just check how the docs have evolved on ggplot2 for one example.
Tidyverse seems to be very much aimed at solving the initial learning curve. However, ANY system which uses allows non-experts to fake expertise denies them the ability to achieve real expertise, and also takes away skills from existing experts.
I'm grumpy about some of the reasons given for Tidyverse superiority: The Stringr package is supposedly somehow better because all of its functions start with "string" so you know you are working with strings. Huh? Because it replaces/wraps a lot of functions which begin with grep so you know you are working with regular expressions. Should we also create a "numbr" package which renames every function which works with "numbers"? Or maybe a subset of numbers, maybe we need a package called "integr".
data.table blows tbs out of the water, once you learn how to use it. Yes, it is harder to learn. Yes, it is very much worth it.
Yes, Hadley pulled off a language upgrade, and with the power of RStudio behind him has a strong hand indeed.
Just wonder if it is better or worse?