Ever since I was using a text editor for R I have been using ESS. That makes it 10 years now. And so, I have decided that it is enough. I started using R during my masters studies for my statistical analysis. I wanted to learn the core of the ...

R-bloggers

After 10 years of using ESS (Emacs Speaks Statistics) for R development, the author explains why they created ESR (Emacs Speaks R) as a focused alternative. Key frustrations with ESS include its aging, overly large codebase, slow adoption of modern Emacs features like tree-sitter, opinionated project definitions that conflict with non-standard R workflows, and difficulty maintaining compatibility with new Emacs versions. ESR aims to be a minimalist, R-first Emacs major mode built on tree-sitter, using Emacs built-in tools like Eglot and Vterm, with support for modern R tooling like Radian and Air, and a cleaner keymap.

Why did I create ESR (my thoughts on ESS)