New post on the R-hub blog! "Refactoring with Jarl: a coffee chat" ✨ By @frick.ws + myself, reviewed by @etiennebacher.bsky.social blog.r-hub.io/2026/06/02/j... #RStats
Collin Berke
@collinberke.bsky.social
Media Research Analyst | #rstats | data enthusiast | news, sports, and podcast aficionado Website: https://www.collinberke.com/ GitHub: https://github.com/collinberke LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/collinberke/
Interesting read: jordanlord.co.uk/blog/3-const... This framing seems useful for the development of data products as well. The one-pager seems like a good constraint to follow. Check it out. #dataBS
3 constraints before I build anything | Jordan Lord
['Programmer', 'Computer nerd', 'Unix enthusiast'];
jordanlord.co.uk
Another good read from @randyau.com. I really like his framing on how to approach the inheritance of an old data pipeline. Asking questions first aligned with my thought process. The analogy of 'just patch a car enough to run' to 'just get the code running and fix it later' also resonated. #dataBS
Randy Au@randyau.com · 4mo agoThis week on Counting Stuff, some... advice? explanation? of why grizzled data folks tend to ask "wtf is this?" when asked to revive an old data pipeline instead of just diving straight into the code, and that's even w/ LLMs to explain the code itself #dataBS www.counting-stuff.com/so-youve-bee...
@nebraskacode.bsky.social is one of my favorite local tech conferences. This year's speakers and sessions look great. If you're in the area (or willing to travel), consider joining. I'll be registering here shortly. #Nebraska #DataAnalytics #DataBS
Nebraska.Code@nebraskacode.bsky.social · 4mo agoEarly Bird Ticket Sales have opened for Nebraska.Code()! Nebraska.Code() brings together talented developers and tech leaders from across the region July 22nd-24th in Lincoln, Nebraska. nebraskacode.amegala.com #Nebraska #AI #EmergingTech #DataAnalytics #Cloud #DevOps #FrontEnd #Agile #Software
Folks, the @dslc.io would love for you to join one of our bookclubs. Learn something new, hang out with some cool people, and have a few laughs along the way. Check out @jonthegeek.com's call 👇 #RStats #DataBS
Jon Harmon (he/him/his) @jonthegeek.com · 4mo agoWe're spinning up new book clubs at DSLC.io, and a great facilitator wants help choosing which book to lead a cohort through next. Please see the poll in the reply! #dataBS #RStats #Quarto #RShiny
TIL a quick way to count the number of files in a directory from the command line: `ls -1 | wc -l` Helpful 👨💻
TIL: oh-my-zsh has some pretty useful built-in aliases to quickly change directories while at the command line. Been a long-time user, so IDK how I missed these: github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmy...
Cheatsheet
🙃 A delightful community-driven (with 2,400+ contributors) framework for managing your zsh configuration. Includes 300+ optional plugins (rails, git, macOS, hub, docker, homebrew, node, php, pyth...
github.com
TIL: `git add --patch` or `git add -p`. Very useful. Learning about it helped level up my #git game. More here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=blbz...
The BEST git command you've never heard of | GIT ADD PATCH
YouTube video by typecraft
youtube.com
Had one of those fun moments getting an answer to 'I wonder if there's an #RStats package for that?' Calculating sunrise and sunset times? Yep, there's a package for that: `suntools` 📦🔗: github.com/adokter/sunt...
GitHub - adokter/suntools: R package to calculate sun position, sunrise, sunset, solar noon and twilight
R package to calculate sun position, sunrise, sunset, solar noon and twilight - adokter/suntools
github.com
Spent some time learning more about @github.com Actions today. Thankful for r-lib's #RStats actions. It makes getting up and going way easier: github.com/r-lib/actions The use of caching for setting up R's dependencies is also 🤌.
GitHub - r-lib/actions: GitHub Actions for the R community
GitHub Actions for the R community. Contribute to r-lib/actions development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
Seeing this years @posit.co table contest winners was inspiring: posit.co/blog/2025-ta.... It's amazing to see the functionality others came up with. My favorite? Leo Ohyama's: github.com/leoohyama/po... . The ticker at the top was a really neat idea. #RStats #dataBS
Winners of the 2025 Table Contest - Posit
We had many submissions to the Posit 2025 Table Contest and this post will show you the winners, the special prize recipients, and the runners up!
posit.co
That feeling of nostalgia when you look at some old #RStats code using magrittr's `%>%`. Taking a moment to pause and reflect on some good times.
Thank you so much, Jen! If all goes well, that submission will be the final #TidyTuesday for 2025! It is *so* helpful when people submit datasets! I've been able to implement features to catch errors in datasets, and I have more on the way. Maybe I'll even finally finish the easier to use website!
Jen Richmond@jenrichmondphd.bsky.social · 9mo agoWoot, just submitted another dataset to #TidyTuesday and now there are 5 PRs waiting for Jon to review. I screenrecorded the process, so if you want to see how EASY it is to contribute a dataset to this AMAZING #rstats community, check out this video. youtu.be/Kp7pyYwLcwc
Today I read: How I build software quickly from @evanhahn.com: evanhahn.com/how-i-build-... Some great advice within. Three sections really landed for me: 1. embrace rough drafts 2. make small changes. 3. avoid wandering the code. Good read. I highly suggest others check it out.
How I build software quickly
Know how good your code needs to be for the task at hand. Start with a rough draft. Try to soften requirements if you can. Don't get distracted. Make small changes. Practice specific skills.
evanhahn.com
I only need *5* more dataset curations (and to review those 5 plus the open PR) to be done curating #TidyTuesday for 2025! I can definitely do at least one myself, so I just need 4 of you to curate a dataset! Check out github.com/rfordatascie... for #RStats instructions.
github.com
We need to have a conversation about random seeds. Don't use 42. blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/if-your-ra...
If your random seed is 42 I will come to your office and set your computer on fire🔥
Figuratively. More likely you'll get a stern talking to.
blog.genesmindsmachines.com
TIL: Set expiry dates on metrics. Recently came across this idea in two blog posts from @adrianhoward.com: 🔗 adrianhoward.com/posts/give-y... 🔗 adrianhoward.com/posts/three-... I also really like the three-question checklist for reviewing data products (e.g., metrics, dashboards) 👇 #dataBS 1/2
Give Your Metrics an Expiry Date
TL;DR: Set expiry dates for your metrics!
adrianhoward.com
A follow up TIL to this: I always had an intuitive sense that #RStats `...` was about passing arguments to other functions. A net new concept for me was the *capturing* of the arguments using `list(...)`. @josiahparry.com's explainer was very helpful (04M45S): www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIMF...
Demystifying . . . (dots): R package dev fundamentals
YouTube video by Josiah Parry
youtube.com
Collin Berke@collinberke.bsky.social · 10mo agoHey #RStats folks, I need some help. I think I understand how to use dots. You know, the `...` in functions. Other times, I'm humbled when trying to use them in my own functions. Any good resources that helped make their use 'just click' for you? #dataBS
Attended the @rconsortium.bsky.social's How to use pointblank to understand, validate, and document your data workshop led by @richmeister.bsky.social: r-consortium.org/webinars/how... Some past workshop materials are here: github.com/rich-iannone... #RStats #dataBS 1/2
How to use pointblank to understand, validate, and document your data – R Consortium
r-consortium.org
TIL: The #RStats testthat package has a `skip()` function: testthat.r-lib.org/reference/sk... I used to comment out tests I didn't want to fix. I'd often forget about these. With skip() I get a nice reminder. Now I'll be sure to go back and fix broken tests I left for later ... yeah, later 😂
Skip a test — skip
skip_if() and skip_if_not() allow you to skip tests, immediately concluding a test_that() block without executing any further expectations. This allows you to skip a test without failure, if for some ...
testthat.r-lib.org
I'm often amazed at how much typing I've saved myself by using `dput(names())` when working with #RStats. I wrote about this back in 2024, and I was reminded about it's utility again today: www.collinberke.com/til/posts/20...
Use base::dput() to easily create and save objects – Collin K. Berke, Ph.D.
Need to create and store an object quickly, use this trick
collinberke.com
Interesting field work in the AI jungle. Here's an earlier small scale study I did with Claude nightingaledvs.com/what-does-ai...
What Does AI Understand About a Graph?, Nightingale
A Conversation With a Chatbot About a Graph How much does AI know about understanding and producing graphs? I don’t...
nightingaledvs.com
Nicola Rennie@nrennie.bsky.social · 10mo agoWondering if you can outsource your data viz work to ChatGPT? 📊 I tested out a few different generative AI tools, giving them prompts to visualise two different data sets. If you're interested in the results, you can read them here: nrennie.rbind.io/blog/gen-ai-... #RStats #Python #DataViz #GenAI
TIL: Microsoft Teams can be configured to use ISO 8601 date formatting. I don't know why this makes me so excited. Perhaps it's the analyst in me who's had to wrestle with and wrangle various date formats in the past ... Obligatory @xkcd.com link: xkcd.com/1179/ #dataBS
ISO 8601
xkcd.com
Interesting framing of the use of LLMs for coding in a post I recently bumped into: codemanship.wordpress.com/2025/09/30/c... (via news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4542...). I'm certainly not AI-averse when performing coding tasks. But, 'Comprehension Debt' is something to be mindful of.
Comprehension Debt: The Ticking Time Bomb of LLM-Generated Code
An effect that’s being more and more widely reported is the increase in time it’s taking developers to modify or fix code that was generated by Large Language Models. If you’ve wo…
codemanship.wordpress.com