Highlights from rstudio::conf(2022)!

I had the pleasure of attending the 2022 R Studio conference last week in Washington D.C. As always, it was filled with incredible workshops taught by highly esteemed instructors, fascinating presentations from R users all over the globe, and of course, great company!

Reunited with my good friend and former professor, Dr. Shannon Pileggi.

I wanted to take a moment to reflect on some of the highlights from my experience at the conference:

1. Machine learning with tidymodels workshop

Prior to attending the machine learning with tidymodels workshop I had experience with building models and data mining in R, but not quite in a “tidy” way. Often times, I had to install several different packages and deep-dive into guides and documentation on how to correctly use the functions. More often than not, different models required entirely different code to build them, and it wasn’t always easy to go back and update code to adjust hyperparameters. The tidymodels package seeks to solve this problem by providing a consistent and flexible framework for modeling and machine learning in R. It features a collection of packages which allow users to build models in R while adhering to tidyverse principles. I was especially impressed by how quickly and easily you can get started building and evaluating virtually any type of model by using this all-in-one package. I definitely plan to use this package when building regression and predictive models in R from now on!

2. .qmd is the new .rmd

Helloooo, Quarto!

If you haven’t heard of Quarto, you’re not alone. Quarto is R Studio’s latest publishing system built using Pandoc. Before you hit CTRL-A-delete on all your .rmd files, take a step back because most R Markdown files can still be rendered using Quarto, in fact, most existing R Markdown documents can be rendered using Quarto by simply changing the extension of r markdown files from .rmd to .qmd.

One difference between R Markdown and Quarto is the ability to easily switch from a PDF or HTML document, to a presentation, even to a website - all using the same .qmd file. Also, Python users, rejoice! Quarto can render Python code, Jupyter notebooks, and of course, R code into one cohesive document. Quarto is also compatible with Javascript, Julia, and Observable. With Quarto, collaborating with others across various languages and environments is more harmonious and seamless.

Watch Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel & Julia Stewart Lowndes’s keynote speech introducing Quarto, the next-generation of R Markdown here.

3. eCommerce using R

Calling all entrepreneurs! One of the talks that I found most interesting was I made an entire e-commerce platform on Shiny presented by Jacqueline Nolis. I was blown away by Jacqueline’s creation of a full e-commerce platform entirely in R. What can’t R do?!

4. Resume & cover letters using R

Travis Gerke’s presentation about industry job-seekers who are transitioning from academia was another eye-opening talk. My biggest takeaway was that I have been SLEEPING on using R to create my resume and cover letters. Now I can call myself an R programmer on a resume that was built in R!

5. Posit is the new RStudio

Wait… what? – my reaction when Hadley Wickam dropped, in my opinion, the biggest bombshell of the conference– RStudio is changing its name to Posit! As a result, rstudio::conf(2022) will be the last RStudio conference ever… only because next year’s conference will officially be “posit::conf(2023)”! Huge congratulations to the team at RStudio, now Posit, on their continued success and outreach to languages beyond R, which prompted the name change.

I am very grateful that I was able to attend the 2022 RStudio conference, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for 2023!