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Comment by valarauko | Hacker News Reader

I hear you. I've been using matplotlib for about as long, and as a python first person still find the API baffling. I avoid it as far as I can, Seaborn where possible. I've been trying out Altair but unfortunately the figure types are relatively restricted, though the figure logic is a relative joy to use.

These days, rather than struggling with the mess that is Python plotting, I drop into rpy2 and make the figure in R (so much easier and unusual figure types are covered).

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It's baffling because it combines a Matlab style API with a Pythonic one using the same functions. If you know which is which it makes more sense.

I know that the matplotlib API combines two distinct styles, but it is little comfort when I'm struggling to wrangle a plot. To this day, I have to look up the API to do anything even slightly non-standard. Contrast with ggplot in R where it's a lot more straightforward. I've tried 'language of graphics' implementations in Python like Plotnine but they're just subtlety different enough from the ggplot implementation in ways that are annoying.

ggplot2 is great until you want to do something slightly off-piste, then it's absolute madness, it has it's own OOP system because R didn't have enough of them already.

I think one of the major advantages of ggplot2 is the ecosystem - often somebody has already implemented the figure type I'm looking for as a ggplot2 extension. This is not to say that ggplot2 or R are capable of plots that can't be achieved in python or matplotlib. Unfortunately for the type of plots I'm usually trying to make, it's more clearly laid out in R rather than python. Python tends to offer me far more friction. For example, I'm unaware of any python package that simplifies creating annotated heatmaps - like pheatmap or complexheatmap can produce. I'm sure matplotlib can make them with enough skill, but it's not my forte. I find it easier to drop down into R and just call pheatmap.

Look at gnuplotlib if you want another option. It's nicer in a whole lot of ways.

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