# tidyverse

23 Hacker News commenters recommended tidyverse and 9 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Widely recommended for readable, productive data work in R, especially with dplyr and ggplot2. Critics say it departs from base R and adds redundant functions.

## Why people recommend it

- Readable code that reads like intent (4 comments): "the verbs literally ARE the operations, so reading the code IS reading the intent" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47891795)) "Unlike others, I find tidyverse (especially ggplot2 and dplyr, which reminds me a lot of pandas) to be quite intuitive." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48669788)) "when used correctly and effectively in the tidyverse, improves the experience of writing and reading code" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46056476))
- Productive, expressive data manipulation (3 comments): "the tidyverse is marvelous. It provides major productivity in organizing and augmenting the data" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46052373)) "more ergonomic and expressive tidyverse syntax" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49548602)) "The data work becomes really easy then" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49346271))
- Coherent ecosystem for stats and ML (3 comments): "the tidyverse is still the most coherent and functional ML/stat computing ecosystem I've ever used" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48658770)) "They fit smoothly into base R, often filling holes that base R has." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46142042)) "a lot of R's strengths are really the tidyverse's" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46052366))

## What people warn about

- Less readable than base R (2 comments): "There has never been anything in tidyverse I couldn't do in base R. Usually a lot cleaner in base R." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48664252)) "transitioning from tidy to base R makes your code less readable than just using base R throughout" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46139811))
- Hides complexity by making things easy (3 comments): "The real problem with this package is that it makes things easy, instead of hard" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48664752)) "The tidyverse has you piping and using advanced concepts from the start." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46141032)) "the tidyverse is trying to turn R into a user-friendly real-time calculator, rather than a tool for stable, deterministic, and literate data analysis" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48663764))
- Redundant functions and foot guns (3 comments): "Some of the tidyverse packages are over kill and contain lots of foot guns." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46141151)) "an ever-expanding ecosystem of redundant functions and anti-patterns" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48658642)) "it has led to entire cohorts of people producing poor code" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48661026))
- Feels like a separate language (3 comments): "whatever wheel reinvention with bizarre semantics that the tidyverse uses" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48661196)) "They're basically two languages sitting on top of each other." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46140235)) "tidyverse pipes always felt like a hack on top of R" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47512502))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [data.table](https://hackerapproved.com/p/data-table.md): 15 recommend
- [dplyr](https://hackerapproved.com/p/dplyr.md): 13 recommend

## Cite as

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