This is a very disorganized list of notes I made trying out Positron for the first time. Hopefully some slightly more coherent updates will come along eventually as I use it more and/or it updates.
Working directories: I thought I would hate the “open a folder” workflow (as opposed to opening a .RProj) but actually I’m vibing with it. It’s especially nice for one-off tasks, e.g. when I use R to calculate an exam curve. I never quite liked choosing between a “floating” qmd or a one-time-use R Project.
That said, my work didn’t “feel” like a project. I like having all the RStudio windows open in my dock so I can project hop. Relatedly - I crash R all the time, and I like that it only crashes the instance I’m in; does using Positron mean that if I crash things, all my projects close?
Quarto: The “new notebook” shortcut on the landing page makes a Jupyter doc not a Quarto doc. Booo. Plus there’s NO RENDER BUTTON for Quarto docs. Ew. Worst,there’s no inline preview option in Quarto yet, which is a major dealbreaker for now. I’m told these things will be added; but for now Positron is not super optimized for Quarto.
Chunks: The chunk shortcut is different. That’s fine, I think it’s PC/Mac consistent now. I do like the drop-down language options when you add a chunk… except that after the first chunk I don’t want to have to “confirm” my language choice every time. The “run this chunk” play button is IMHO better, although breaking my muscle memory has been hard.
Panes: I don’t like having the variables pane at the bottom, and then it disappears if you switch tabs at top. I like being able to see my environment at all times regardless of what help tab I’m in.
Files: I like having notification badges for unsaved files. It’s also just a lot easier to navigate between files in general.
Help: The dynamic suggestions are cool… but floating helpers are in my way. I like the info but it’s in my way enough that I would turn this off - I’d rather have some kind of permanent help text location in a corner that I can glance at when I need it.
