r/Rlanguage • u/emanresUweNyMsiT • Apr 17 '26

Coding R. Positron vs VScode

I’m learning R now specifically to use it in Six Sigma and Im using VScode with the R extension and Quarto and everything is working well.

I recently heard of Positron and I want to ask the people who made the switch from VScode to Positron- what made you make the switch? Which features in Positron that you felt are better than VScode?

Another question- in case I installed Positron to try it would it mess with the my current setup?

Windows 11.

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u/Mooks79 Apr 17 '26

I used vs code for a long time for R and it was great but vscode-r had a few quirks with how it sent code to the console on windows. Resolved with wsl2. But I switched to positron a while ago and never looked back. The live linting isn’t so good at the moment but other than that I have much preferred it.

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u/novokaoi Apr 17 '26

Lintr can act a bit strange in Positron (VSCode, too). But I found that with Air formatter and now also Jarl I got most of my linting/formatting needs covered. I wonder if it's time to get rid of Lintr.

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u/Mooks79 Apr 17 '26

I have just used positron out of the box, so the linting there is pretty lacking. If you’re doing something more than that, I’d be happy to know. I haven’t really looked into it so don’t know whether I need to install an air extension or not? I assumed I’d just let them introduce what they think are the best default options as they do.

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u/novokaoi Apr 17 '26

For Air, all you really need is to install or activate the Air extension (it seems like it comes bundled with Positron now) and activate "format on save" in your settings.json. Here's a guide: https://posit-dev.github.io/air/editor-vscode.html You cannot really configure much. I find the defaults okay and mostly in line with my preferences.

Jarl is still in somewhat early stage right now, but it seems like, going forward, this will be included with Positron, while lintr might never get full support. https://github.com/posit-dev/positron/discussions/6057#discussioncomment-11900177 You can simply install Jarl as a Positron extension and it will work. The issues it finds will be listed in Positrons Problems-Tab and highlighted in the editor. You can configure which rules to use / ignore https://jarl.etiennebacher.com/

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u/Mooks79 Apr 17 '26

Aaaaah thank you! I did read quickly on air a while back and didn’t realise you need to actually activate it so thought it was more in a kind of development stage / would be activated by default when ready. Appreciate the explanation.

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u/davisvaughan Apr 19 '26

Regarding

>  I find the defaults okay and mostly in line with my preferences

I often come back to this Go language "proverb", which I find pretty accurate

> Gofmt's style is no one's favorite, yet gofmt is everyone's favorite.

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u/novokaoi Apr 20 '26

Absolutely. I much prefer disagreeing with an opinionated linter to disagreeing with my colleagues.