On debugging
My favorite advice on debugging is from Professor Norman Matloff: Finding your bug is a process of confirming the many things that you believe are true – until you find one that is not true.
Step-Debugging magrittr/dplyr Pipelines in R with wrapr and replyr
In this screencast we demonstrate how to easily and effectively step-debug magrittr/dplyr pipelines in R using wrapr and replyr.
Announcing the wrapr packge for R
Recently Dirk Eddelbuettel pointed out that our R function debugging wrappers would be more convenient if they were available in a low-dependency micro package dedicated to little else. Dirk is a very smart person, and like most R users we are deeply in his debt; so we (Nina Zumel and […]
Evolving R Tools and Practices
One of the distinctive features of the R platform is how explicit and user controllable everything is. This allows the style of use of R to evolve fairly rapidly. I will discuss this and end with some new notations, methods, and tools I am nominating for inclusion into your view […]
Using the Bizarro Pipe to Debug magrittr Pipelines in R
I have just finished and released a free new R video lecture demonstrating how to use the “Bizarro pipe” to debug magrittr pipelines. I think R dplyr users will really enjoy it. Please read on for the link to the video lecture.
My favorite R bug
In this note am going to recount “my favorite R bug.” It isn’t a bug in R. It is a bug in some code I wrote in R. I call it my favorite bug, as it is easy to commit and (thanks to R’s overly helpful nature) takes longer than […]
Unit tests as penance
It recently hit me that I see unit tests as a form of penance (in addition to being a great tool for specification and test driven development). If you fix a bug and don’t add a unit test I suspect you are not actually sorry.