Talk: 'Base Slaps' at the NHS-R Conference, 18 October 2023.
You can see the slides on the web and read an associated blogpost.
Abstract:
Did you hear? Base R is dead! Or is it? I’ve spent most of my time in the public sector using the tidyverse, but I started learning R before the tidyverse existed (to be polite, you could call me ‘seasoned’). Recently I’ve started to write more base R code again. Why? I'll talk about how base R can do loads of neat stuff out of the box without you needing to install and update any packages (dependencies aren’t bad things per se, but can cause trouble if not managed appropriately). I'll also tell you about some recent additions, like the base pipe and lambda function notation, which demonstrate how base R is responding to the needs of the modern coder. Oh, and you can also do wacky stuff like make an interactive pixel-art creator, a persistent Tamagotchi pet, or a procedural dungeon-crawler. Note that this talk does not constitute a ‘base versus tidyverse' flamewar. It’s purely to appreciate the elegance of good ol’ base R and to highlight some things it can do that you might not have realised (or like me, you forgot a long time ago).