63 karma · joined March 24, 2018
It describes 3 new generics in base R that help their new S7 system.
It all seems motivated by better interop with python which is 'neat' but really doesn't seem like a critical necessity of the language. I guess it's more of a tactical thing where they're trying to make it easier for python users to eventually try R. Or for R users that work alongside python users to not abandon R.
R's mess of OOP systems works great, S3 is "fine" for just dispatching 'methods' based on attributes, one doesn't even know it's happening in base R ALL the time.
R flexibility also makes it possible to build your own class system. i.e. modern ggplot2 has its own ggproto object system.
R is so much better than python in many areas concerning data pipelines: connecting with external database systems through an unified API, superior data munging utilities, as well as plotting, a more comprehensive (obviously) statistical analysis toolset.
I even find rmarkdown vastly superior to jupyter.
But IMO the best reason to use R rather tha python is that its tools will make you approach the problem as a statistician rather than a programmer.
Plus you get the option of rendering an HTML which IMO is no different than having a jupyter file.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-house-that-came-i...
I'd even argue that - for data science - it's more important than any ammout of years doing engineering.