this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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Programming
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I went with
ggplot2
some time ago, despite not using or knowing R at all. What pushed me in that direction was that I was using other plotting libraries (I don't recall which at the time), and there was some aspect of spacing between elements or some such that was making a particular plot look ever so slightly ugly in my eyes... and I couldn't fix it!In my frustration, I consciously decided to set aside my version of your "reasonably designed" requirement (I find R consistently frustrating in this regard, though I know some people do all their programming in it and I salute them). I gave
ggplot2
a try with a cargo culting approach: search for how to make the kind of plot you want to make, and just tweak that template. I was blown away. I could find recipes for everything I wanted to do, the results were instantly more attractive than what I had before, and I could tweak everything.matplotlib
is absolutely a reasonable option, but even years later I still have R environments attached to most projects specifically for data visualization, and still produce plots that are delightfully aesthetic. So here's one voice to say thatggplot2
has real merit, especially if your aim is specifically to produce visualizations rather than explore a programming ecosystem.Interesting. This matches my one experience using ggplot2, in which I found it easy to modify existing code. Looks like the library works very well with the "cargo cult" approach