# RStudio

Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/rstudio/

9 people recommended RStudio in Hacker News comments, 3 had mixed feelings and 6 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 12 months, in 7 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Favored as the best R data science IDE, praised for making everything inspectable. Critics find its support for Git and LLM tools weak.

Summary written by Claude from 15 comments.

## Why people recommend it

- Best and most widely used data science IDE (2 comments in the sample): "RStudio is still the best data science IDE and it's not even close." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47804521)) "at this point, I literally don't know anyone who doesn't use it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47801141))
- Makes R easy to inspect (2 comments in the sample): "I loved that everything in RStudio was so easily inspectable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49548047)) "RStudio makes R seem like scriptable excel" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46668269))

## What people warn about

- Weak support for Git and LLM tools (2 comments in the sample): "RStudio is great when you are doing your own thing, but when it comes to more generic tools like Git, LLM, Autoformatting etc…" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46076600)) "the support for LLM coding tools in RStudio is so bare bones" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46076456))

## Other IDEs people recommend

- [JetBrains IDEs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jetbrains-ides/): 154 recommend, 58 mixed, 129 criticize
- [IntelliJ IDEA](https://hackerapproved.com/p/intellij-idea/): 141 recommend, 47 mixed, 93 criticize
- [Microsoft Visual Studio](https://hackerapproved.com/p/visual-studio/): 106 recommend, 41 mixed, 146 criticize
- [Delphi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/delphi/): 92 recommend, 23 mixed, 38 criticize

## The badge

A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged.

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "RStudio", https://hackerapproved.com/p/rstudio/ (9 recommend, 3 mixed, 6 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026).

Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.