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Comment on Announcing R Tools for Visual Studioparent

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Why save it at all when in RStudio you can skip that step. Doesn't have anything to do with a mouse either because you still write and execute all the code with the keyboard. This all seems very out of left field.

but you don't have to save it to view it under the command line.

  > plot(rnorm(100))
is not going to give you anything different under R-Studio, than command-line R, other than redirecting the identical output into a convenience window in its IDE. Sure R-Studio will save a history for you and throw a few conveniences at you but, command-line >plot(rnorm(100)) will popup a window on all OS versions of R and you'll be able to visualize all day long. Including multiple open charts. With selectable focus for further manipulation. R-Studio (MS-VS-RStudio) is just a very thin wrapper on something which is 100% there already. However, in return for nominal initial friendliness, it has the downside of sleepwalking you into a workflow which, if you don't understand what's going on underneath, will hold back your R learning curve.

Now IDEs are useful, if you understand the tradeoffs. They're a higher-level wrapper on stuff, with all the pluses and minuses that that entails. Higher-level = lower learning curve, greater immediate productivity, vs lower-level = higher learning curve, lower immediate productivity but greater long term power.

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