Hadley Wickham

The past few DS Labs, the guest Lab Mgrs have mentioned the {waldo} pckg, & many folks didn't know it! I think it's such a helpful itty #rstats 📦 {waldo} shows you the diffs between 2 R objects 🔍 even ggplot2 objs! That's kinda it! Helpful for tests, students, etc! But... it doesn't have a hex 🥺

New blog post up: if you've been paying close attention to LLM prices, you may have noticed that they have dropped *significantly* over the past few months, which is not what I expected. minimaxir.com/2026/10/chea...

As always with AI we need to ask: 1. Is AI good at this? 2. Should we use AI for this? People are often surprised not only by how hard it is to answer (1) but also by how (2) is a completely separate question than (1)!

This sign makes me feel personally victimised

New on the @posit.co open source blog: if you step away from your coding agent long enough to make a coffee, your next message could cost ~16x as much☕ @sara-altman.bsky.social and I wrote about token caching and AI costs: opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-10...

I made an AI video about genzplyr and I lowkey love it. It's also 100% slop. In this post I dig into what makes something slop, when it's ok to share it, and how to avoid it in work that matters. Read more at: substack.hadley.nz/p/what-is-slop

I've done a bunch of work on haven recently, so if you rely on it you might want to try out the dev version: github.com/tidyverse/ha.... One of the headline features of the upcoming work is that write_sas() finally properly works! #rstats

Calling all certified Carpentries Instructors who love R... come work with me! @ratiopbc.com is hiring a Technical Instructor (contractor) to teach @carpentries.carpentries.org workshops on R as part of a data upskilling initiative at a state-level public health agency ratiopbc.com/careers/#tec...

ggextenders love data grammars... 🗣️🧐 So we're super excited to hear from Richard Iannone a week from today on the grammar of tables and GT! Join us!

tigris v2.3.0, one of the major milestones from this summer's R Consortium grant, is now on CRAN. - The package has a modern httr2 backend now, which will help the package last into the future; - New features include `population_centers()`, shown here; - The open issue count is now at zero!

🖇️ readxl 1.6.0 is released 🖇️ It includes fixes for several CVEs and can read password-protected xlsx files 🗝️ #rstats readxl.tidyverse.org/news/index.h...

I've always felt that #rstats's ranking in the TIOBE index felt a lot like random noise, but every time it gains or drops significantly TIOBE tells a little story about it. So I extracted all those stories into one place: gist.github.com/hadley/1af6d...

On Sunday, November 15th, we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the first release of data.table!!! 🥳 👩‍💻 This remote event features talks from data.table superstars, tutorials for all levels, and prize giveaways! 🎟️ Get your tickets here:

Dogs of New York, or, the Rise of the Goldendoodles. kieranhealy.org/blog/archive...

Third blog post about rig 0.11.0, the new version of the R installation manager, about managing R projects, virtual environments and standalone R scripts: opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-10... #RStats

Excited to share my latest blog on Posit Open Source! During my internship, I built 10 apps and 5 computational biology packages using R, Python, Shiny, and Shinyreact to make scientific research more accessible, especially in rare diseases and cancer. opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-10...

Important knowledge for all those looking to submit an R package

Second blog post about rig 0.11.0: manage R packages with rig. opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-10... #Rstats

{ggindex}: numbered points that explain themselves #rstats #ggplot2 new extension that I think should be useful. based on a long forgotten demo, that I decided to revisit. see more here: discindo.github.io/ggindex/ or discindo.org/posts/2026-1... the first release is submitted to CRAN.

Weekend essay and a recommendation: AI in the workplace vs. AI in education blog.stephenturner.us/p/ai-workpla...

in 2020 my lab quit Microsoft Word and began writing in R Markdown, an open-source document-publishing system that facilitates a clear, permanent link between statements in text (scientific prose) and the code producing analyses and visualizations supporting those statements (scientific analyses)

I'm trying to get better at making short explanatory videos, using AI to radically decrease production time while hopefully still keeping the human touch. I'd love to know what you think of this video that briefly introduces S7: youtube.com/shorts/C98di...

We have just merged in a massive PR to #ggsql, bringing first class support for 15 new database backends. If your favourite database is missing, please let us now If your favourite database is in there, please test it out and let us know if you run into issues

In case you weren't able to make it, @sara-altman.bsky.social and I wrote up the talk for the @posit.co OSS blog. We talked about the rise of "vibe analysis," the pitfalls of human-in-the-loop, and some new software from Posit. opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-10...

We released rig 0.11.0, the #Rstats installation manager, this week (and 0.10.0 a bit before). New: a website at rig.r-lib.org, user mode R installations, R package management and R projects. First of three blog posts, on R installations: opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-10...

What does the author of half the #RStats tidyverse use to build packages today? Hadley Wickham shows his Positron + AI workflow at #WOMBAT2026. Register to see it. wombat2026.numbat.space/program/tuto...

Hex sticker gingerbread by @visnut.bsky.social and other baked treats 🥰 It’s a good day in the office!

I’m not claiming that this video is particularly good, but this was ~1 minute of prompting, ~$2 of google apis, ~$3 of opus 5.5, and 10 minutes of waiting. I think if you put in even 15 minutes of prompting you could create something solid.

I've been fixing a bunch of old rvest issues. The economics blow my mind: most issues cost $0.25-$1 to fix with Kimi K3. It makes me feel guilty that these issues have lingered for so long, given that they're now so cheap to fix.

What other transformative #rstats #python etc packages and stuff have you embraced the last few years?

I just rebuilt my website using Quarto 🎉 My publication list generates itself from my Zotero library, and papers include links to materials and OA versions. The website's first post is on how to build your own, featuring an app that does all the coding for you: dsquintana.com/posts/quarto...

🎨 formatted spreadsheets can now make the round trip in R. {forgts} reads a formatted .xlsx file into a gt table, and the new {gtxlsx} package by J.M. Garbuszus writes it back out with fills, fonts, and colors #rstats post available in English and Spanish luisdva.github.io/rstats/round...

Please stop anthropomorphizing computers. They cannot "run" a program, because they don't have legs

Nic ( @niccrane.bsky.social) taught us all about FREAKING PARQUET FILES on the #DSLab, which are wayyyyy cooler than I realized. Parquet files: Preserve data types Are fast & small Are column-oriented so you can read just 1 col if wanted! & Positron displays'em out-the-box! ▶️ youtu.be/2mQ4kc9J9uQ

New in querychat: multiple tables, chat history, data-dict, and easy extraction of findings into Quarto, Shiny, Jupyter, etc. querychat is now much more capable beyond just querying "pre-defined" Shiny outputs. Available for both #rstats and #python. opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-09...

I’m pleased to announce that Vol 18 Issue 3 of The R Journal is out now! 🥳 Free & open access, R journal is made possible by our volunteer editors, reviewers + contributing authors. Thank you all! journal.r-project.org/issues/2026-3/ 🧵 20 articles 👇 #rstats journal.r-project.org/issues/2026-3/

'You'll choke too' - I wanted to reshare my wildfire aerial embroidery now summer is finally over as it really meant a lot to me. Autumn is here but as the fruit ripened much earlier than normal, I worry the little birds and animals won't have enough for the winter...

As announced at posit::conf(2026) #ggsql is now, with the release of version 0.5.0, in Beta. I'm so excited for the future of this project. Read all about what the latest version brings you in the release post

#rstats new blog post! "Snapshotting error messages", where I explain why I think all testthat::expect_error() should be replaced by testthat::expect_snapshot(error = TRUE), and where I present an easy, automated way to do this transition. www.etiennebacher.com/posts/2026-0...

I had nearly the opposite experience at conf. AI has disrupted the way we work and changed so much about our jobs and our relationship with code. I've been in the same emotional space as Jon and the feeling is a real and valid and reasonable response to that change! And also...

Possibly the best gift I ever received (from @winstonchang.bsky.social)

I am a bad father: reshape turned 21 back on August 5th and I didn't even notice or celebrate #rstats

🎙️ Today on Regression to the Mean Girls @sarahlotspeich.bsky.social & I chat with @hadley.nz about an over-engineered solution to purchase some beautiful art!

ellmer 0.5.0 is now on CRAN! #rstats 🎉 New in this release: citations from web search, new ways to upload files, token counting before you send, streaming structured output, and AWS Bedrock Mantle support. Read all about it on the Posit Open Source blog: opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-09...

I had an amazing time talking w/ @lucystats.bsky.social @sarahlotspeich.bsky.social about my longrunning Law & Order obsession on Regression to the Mean Girls!! Check out my analysis of the Law & Order timeline ⚖️👩🏻‍⚖️ regressiontothemeangirls.com/posts/03-law... creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/...

Data Craft Circle is back after a summer break! Come share your summer projects or what you hope to work on in the fall. Or if you've never joined us before, come hang out with others working on analog data projects! You can register for free at this link: buff.ly/AtfGRPU