exercism / exercism/r

Cross-language comparisons for dataframe manipulation

Open Beginner friendly
#527 0 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub
Dominant language
R
Stars
31
Forks
46
Avg merge
4h 25m
Merged PRs (30d)
8

Description

In the [dataframes](https://exercism.org/tracks/r/concepts/dataframes) concept, there was an original intention to include comparisons between the R/dplyr content and Python/pandas and SQL. In the rush to get the syllabus launched, this aspect was deleted from the `about.md`.

After playing about in the last couple of days, here is a not-totally-serious suggestion for what a more thorough comparison would look like.

| | R | Python | Julia |
|------------|:---:|:------:|:------:|
| data.frame | ✔️ | | |
| tibble | ✔️ | | |
| pandas | | ✔️ | |
| DataFrames | | | ✔️ |
| Polars | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| DuckDB | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| PostgreSQL | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Arrow | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Dask | | ✔️ | |

Some of this was on my "should learn in 2026" list back around New Year, so I'll play with it on my GH pages. I doubt much of it will reach the Exercism website! (though maybe some of it should).

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

Research direction

Start with the dataframes concept page and the about.md file mentioned in the issue. Compare the existing R/dplyr material with the proposed cross-language table, then confirm the intended scope before editing. Done means the agreed comparison is restored or added to the concept documentation without expanding beyond the settled content.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
julia, pandas, postgresql, python, r, sql
Domain
data, documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
65/100

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