# data.table

15 Hacker News commenters recommended data.table and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Fast, high-throughput R package for large data tables that many prefer over pandas. Its syntax is hard to learn and remember.

## Why people recommend it

- Very fast on large data (2 comments): "data.table is just about the best-in-class tool/package for true high-throughput" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46051441)) "Data.table is just so much faster" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48663941))
- Preferred over pandas for most work (2 comments): "data.table is light years better than pandas in my view" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47001657)) "I prefer data.table for most of my uses." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48661926))
- Good developer experience and simplicity (3 comments): "a small number of packages (box, data.table) designed by people who understand programming" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48659687)) "its simplicity seems to me very similar to what the author presented in the end" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47626377)) "R's data.table had the slickest dataframe developer experience" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49345946))

## What people warn about

- Hard syntax, easy to forget (2 comments): "data.table is very capable, but the incantations to use it are far less obvious" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46051405)) "I can never remember the data.table syntax, every time I use it I have to re-learn it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48665006))
- Awkward API for programmatic use (2 comments): "there is effectively no standard-eval programmatic interface for it, which makes it a headache for building programs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47631782)) "Data.table is a masterclass in bad API design." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48660821))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [tidyverse](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tidyverse.md): 23 recommend
- [dplyr](https://hackerapproved.com/p/dplyr.md): 13 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "data.table", https://hackerapproved.com/p/data-table/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).