data.table
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 3 r packages by recommenders
Fast, high-throughput R package for large data tables that many prefer over pandas. Its syntax is hard to learn and remember.
Fast, high-throughput R package for large data tables that many prefer over pandas. Its syntax is hard to learn and remember.
17 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 15
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 88%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 15 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 7.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Very fast on large data
“data.table is just about the best-in-class tool/package for true high-throughput”
Comment from 25 Nov 2025 in “Python is not a great language for data science” “Data.table is just so much faster”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Too many R packages: CRAN is inundated with submissions” Preferred over pandas for most work
“data.table is light years better than pandas in my view”
Comment from 13 Feb 2026 in “Apache Arrow is 10 years old” “I prefer data.table for most of my uses.”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Too many R packages: CRAN is inundated with submissions” Good developer experience and simplicity
“a small number of packages (box, data.table) designed by people who understand programming”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Too many R packages: CRAN is inundated with submissions” “its simplicity seems to me very similar to what the author presented in the end”
Comment from 3 Apr 2026 in “What Category Theory Teaches Us About DataFrames” “R's data.table had the slickest dataframe developer experience”
Comment from 18 Aug 2026 in “Python Polars Cheatsheet (based on our O'Reilly book)”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Hard syntax, easy to forget
“data.table is very capable, but the incantations to use it are far less obvious”
Comment from 25 Nov 2025 in “Python is not a great language for data science” “I can never remember the data.table syntax, every time I use it I have to re-learn it.”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Too many R packages: CRAN is inundated with submissions” Awkward API for programmatic use
“there is effectively no standard-eval programmatic interface for it, which makes it a headache for building programs”
Comment from 3 Apr 2026 in “What Category Theory Teaches Us About DataFrames” “Data.table is a masterclass in bad API design.”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Too many R packages: CRAN is inundated with submissions”
Other r packages people recommend
The two most recommended other r packages, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 3 r packages, rankedWhat people said
12 of the 17 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“R's data.table had the slickest dataframe developer experience”
“I can never remember the data.table syntax, every time I use it I have to re-learn it.”
“Data.table is just so much faster”
“I prefer data.table for most of my uses.”
“Data.table is a masterclass in bad API design.”
“a small number of packages (box, data.table) designed by people who understand programming”
“there is effectively no standard-eval programmatic interface for it, which makes it a headache for building programs”
“its simplicity seems to me very similar to what the author presented in the end”
“data.table is light years better than pandas in my view”
“All the 'Big data' for the team was done by me using R tidyverse, data.table and few libraries”
“data.table is just about the best-in-class tool/package for true high-throughput”
“data.table is very capable, but the incantations to use it are far less obvious”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.