Collection of R anti-patterns

[seankross]

Inspired by tweets from @HenrikBengtsson:

https://twitter.com/henrikbengtsson/status/846151003808264192

It could be useful to document widespread anti-patterns in an effort to educate folks and prevent them from falling into these patterns.

[jennybc]

That tweet is also a good example -- well, as good as 140 characters will allow -- of showing why the anti-pattern is harmful.

I am so tempted to dump forth a collection of these right now 😁.

@seankross what sort of format did you have in mind for making this collection available? Both technically and people-ly? Because one person's anti-pattern is another's preferred workflow.

[seankross]

You should dump! I'm sure there's also an interesting spectrum between anti-patterns that beginners fall into versus anti-patterns used by more experienced programmers. I was thinking it could be available as a series of Rmds which make a website or a bookdown book. Of course it would be open source and on GitHub so folks could discuss (in issues) the de/merits of an anti-pattern/workflow.

[MilesMcBain]

Sound like a sequal to The R Inferno. But maybe it's a bit more science/research focussed given our experiences.

I would like to volunteer a small, yet to be written, vignette on a pattern I'm dubbing the grep turing machine.

[seankross]

I haven't read the entire R Inferno but I believe its audience is an analyst using R, where I was thinking more in terms of anti-patterns that R package authors should avoid, but of course documenting both is useful.