tidyverse
Hacker ApprovedThe most recommended of 3 r packages
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.
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.
32 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 23
- criticize it
- 9
- approval share
- 72%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not 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
- 23 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 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
Readable code that reads like intent
“the verbs literally ARE the operations, so reading the code IS reading the intent”
Comment from 24 Apr 2026 in “AI Can Write Data Analysis Code, but Can You Trust the Result?” “Unlike others, I find tidyverse (especially ggplot2 and dplyr, which reminds me a lot of pandas) to be quite intuitive.”
Comment from 25 Jun 2026 in “Too many R packages: CRAN is inundated with submissions” “when used correctly and effectively in the tidyverse, improves the experience of writing and reading code”
Comment from 26 Nov 2025 in “Python is not a great language for data science” - Comment from 27 Apr 2026 in “AI Can Write Data Analysis Code, but Can You Trust the Result?”
Productive, expressive data manipulation
“the tidyverse is marvelous. It provides major productivity in organizing and augmenting the data”
Comment from 25 Nov 2025 in “Python is not a great language for data science” “more ergonomic and expressive tidyverse syntax”
Comment from 3 Sep 2026 in “Pre-Release of Polars 2.0” “The data work becomes really easy then”
Comment from 18 Aug 2026 in “Python Polars Cheatsheet (based on our O'Reilly book)” Coherent ecosystem for stats and ML
“the tidyverse is still the most coherent and functional ML/stat computing ecosystem I've ever used”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Too many R packages: CRAN is inundated with submissions” “They fit smoothly into base R, often filling holes that base R has.”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “R packages for data science” “a lot of R's strengths are really the tidyverse's”
Comment from 25 Nov 2025 in “Python is not a great language for data science”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Less readable than base R
“There has never been anything in tidyverse I couldn't do in base R. Usually a lot cleaner in base R.”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Too many R packages: CRAN is inundated with submissions” “transitioning from tidy to base R makes your code less readable than just using base R throughout”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “R packages for data science” Hides complexity by making things easy
“The real problem with this package is that it makes things easy, instead of hard”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Too many R packages: CRAN is inundated with submissions” “The tidyverse has you piping and using advanced concepts from the start.”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “R packages for data science” “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”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Too many R packages: CRAN is inundated with submissions” Redundant functions and foot guns
“Some of the tidyverse packages are over kill and contain lots of foot guns.”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “R packages for data science” “an ever-expanding ecosystem of redundant functions and anti-patterns”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Too many R packages: CRAN is inundated with submissions” “it has led to entire cohorts of people producing poor code”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Too many R packages: CRAN is inundated with submissions” Feels like a separate language
“whatever wheel reinvention with bizarre semantics that the tidyverse uses”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Too many R packages: CRAN is inundated with submissions” “They're basically two languages sitting on top of each other.”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “R packages for data science” “tidyverse pipes always felt like a hack on top of R”
Comment from 25 Mar 2026 in “Data Manipulation in Clojure Compared to R and Python”
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.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| tidyverseThis page | 23 | 9 | 72% | 6 | — | Approved |
| data.table | 15 | 2 | 88% | 7 | — | Approved |
| dplyr | 13 | 0 | 100% | 6 | — | Approved |
What people said
35 of the 38 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it's just a simple one-line change”
“more ergonomic and expressive tidyverse syntax”
“The data work becomes really easy then”
“Unlike others, I find tidyverse (especially ggplot2 and dplyr, which reminds me a lot of pandas) to be quite intuitive.”
“users have clearly delivered the verdict that it is friendlier than base R”
“That might be the goal of tidyverse devs, but it hasn’t been the reality since inception.”
“The real problem with this package is that it makes things easy, instead of hard”
“There has never been anything in tidyverse I couldn't do in base R. Usually a lot cleaner in base R.”
“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”
“whatever wheel reinvention with bizarre semantics that the tidyverse uses”
“it has led to entire cohorts of people producing poor code”
“the coyote used tidyverse and the road runner used base R”
“is not strong evidence that a particular software ecosystem (tidyverse) is flawed”
“produces gigantic R markdown files with 20 imports to accomplish something that would be shorter”
“It's certainly quite pleasant to work with...but I would rather use sql for etl”
“If R was subset to only the tidyverse 5 years ago then it wouldn't have lost so much ground to Python in nearly all fields.”
“the tidyverse is still the most coherent and functional ML/stat computing ecosystem I've ever used”
“an ever-expanding ecosystem of redundant functions and anti-patterns”
“I used it to illustrate the good readability of tidyverse.”
“the verbs literally ARE the operations, so reading the code IS reading the intent”
“tidyverse pipes always felt like a hack on top of R”
“They fit smoothly into base R, often filling holes that base R has.”
“The main tidyverse packages are popular because they are different from base R.”
“Still feel a lot of enterprises and industries looked over its capabilities then.”
“Tidyverse is valuable specifically because it's the best at doing what it does”
“Some of the tidyverse packages are over kill and contain lots of foot guns.”
“The tidyverse has you piping and using advanced concepts from the start.”
“They're basically two languages sitting on top of each other.”
“transitioning from tidy to base R makes your code less readable than just using base R throughout”
“outside bioconductor or the tidyverse in R can be just as unstable”
“funds a lot of development of important packages in the tidyverse”
“when used correctly and effectively in the tidyverse, improves the experience of writing and reading code”
“the tidyverse is marvelous. It provides major productivity in organizing and augmenting the data”
“a lot of R's strengths are really the tidyverse's”
“allowing the tidyverse packages to do things like evaluate arguments in the context of a data frame”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.