One of the better comments in this thread, I would only qualify that different levels of ability mediate much of the "how hard is it to make an unmaintainable mess" dimension. Dplyr/tidy code can be pasta, as can pandas, and there is really a whole new level of that given llm generated nonesense edited/tweaked by novices masquerading as seniors.
Apropos this idea of a vs code competitor, I wish they would spend more effort on existing products. I find quarto frustratingly buggy and meanwhile see no reason to move my workflow from vscode to this new thing. Ymmv
> I would only qualify that different levels of ability mediate much of the "how hard is it to make an unmaintainable mess" dimension
Oh definitely, but at least Python's stdlib is relatively consistent, which helps packages be a little more so.
My favourite example is t.test, which is not a t method for the test class, unlike summary.lm which is.
And there's like 4 different styles of function naming in base & stats alone.
Python has problems (for gods sake, why isn't len a method?) but it's a little more consistent.
I used to think that R was responsible for a lot more of the mess than I now do, having seen the same kind of DS code (and I am a DS) written in both Python and R.
And it would be sweet if R had a pytest equivalent, if I never have to write self.assertEqual again, it'll be too soon.
Apropos this idea of a vs code competitor, I wish they would spend more effort on existing products. I find quarto frustratingly buggy and meanwhile see no reason to move my workflow from vscode to this new thing. Ymmv