I’m a student and open-source contributor who has been actively working with R, mainly in data.table and parts of the RStudio (Posit) ecosystem. I’m currently preparing a Google Summer of Code (GSoC) proposal and want to make sure I focus on real problems that users actually face, rather than inventing something artificial.
I’d really appreciate input from people who use data.table or RStudio regularly.
What I’m looking for
- Things in data.table that feel:
- confusing
- error-prone
- poorly documented
- repetitive or verbose
- hard to debug or optimize
- Missing tooling around RStudio that would make:
- data.table workflows easier
- performance analysis clearer
- learning/teaching data.table more intuitive
- Pain points where you’ve thought:
“I wish there was a tool / feature / addin for this…”
Examples (just to clarify scope)
- Difficulty understanding why a
data.tableoperation is slow - Repetitive boilerplate code for joins / grouping / updates
- Debugging chained
DT[i, j, by]expressions - Lack of visual or interactive tools for data.table inside RStudio
- Testing / benchmarking workflows that feel clunky
Goal
The goal is to propose a practical, community-useful GSoC project (not overly complex, but impactful). I’m happy to:
- prototype solutions
- contribute PRs
- improve docs or tooling
- build RStudio addins or Shiny tools if useful
If you’ve run into any recurring frustration, even if it feels small, I’d love to hear about it.
Thanks a lot for your time — and thanks to the maintainers and contributors who make R such a great ecosystem