Nic Crane
niccrane.bsky.social
Nic Crane
@niccrane.bsky.social
Independent R consultant. Apache Arrow PMC Member & #rstats 📦 maintainer.

Arrow course launching early 2026: https://big-data-r.thinkific.com/

More of my stuff at https://niccrane.com/
Really fantastic guide by Lada Kesseler about working with AI coding agents. 📖🤖

It's divided into:

- Obstacles: limitations you're likely to run into ⛔

- Anti-patterns: common mistakes people make 👎

- Patterns: strategies and best practices 🦸‍♂️

lexler.github.io/augmented-co...
Augmented Coding Patterns
A collection of emerging patterns, anti-patterns, and obstacles for effective AI-augmented software development
lexler.github.io
November 13, 2025 at 4:42 PM
If you've ever fought with {renv}, you *have* to go watch Shannon's talk from posit::conf. I had soooo many 💡 moments the first time I saw it!
The recording of my #rstats posit::conf talk ✨ practical {renv}✨ is available! 🎉

I created this talk for frustrated {renv} users 🫠 and potential {renv} users🤩

youtu.be/l01u7Ue9pIQ?...

Even if {renv} isn't on your radar, you may still find this talk interesting if you are curious about🤔...
Practical {renv} (Shannon Pileggi, The PCCTC) | posit::conf(2025)
YouTube video by Posit PBC
youtu.be
November 11, 2025 at 8:59 PM
I'm *loving* structured outputs in {ellmer} for extracting data from text directly into R objects, removing the need to write pedantic prompts about output format! 😻

Here's a quick example - extracting info about Kendrick Lamar from his Wiki page.

gist.github.com/thisisnic/e4...

#rstats #llms
November 11, 2025 at 6:44 PM
We’re excited to announce the release of {arrow} 22.0.0 🏹📦 Here’s a roundup of the new features and changes, in a 🧵 Full details can be found at arrow.apache.org/docs/r/news/ #rstats
Changelog
arrow.apache.org
November 6, 2025 at 10:02 AM
Fantastic keynote by Wes McKinney @ #EARL2025 - personal highlights:

🧏 AI is less of a threat to data science as requires human judgment

🤔 AI becoming the new literacy

🗣️ Learn to use coding agents and AI, & articulate reviews

📖 Spend more time reading code, less time writing

#ai #rstats #python
October 16, 2025 at 4:38 PM
Great talk by @romainfrancois.bsky.social on how xeus-r makes it easier to work with #rstats in Jupyter; it's simpler than IRkernel and in combination with WebR opens up a ton of cool possibilities for in-browser Jupyter+R 🎉

#EARL2025
October 15, 2025 at 11:18 AM
Anyone else been using Jupyter notebooks for year and didn't know the etymology of the name?! #EARL2025
October 15, 2025 at 11:08 AM
Reposted by Nic Crane
🚀 The 4th edition of the Posit AI Newsletter is out!

This biweekly, bite-sized update by @sara-altman.bsky.social and @simonpcouch.com covers Claude Sonnet 4.5, OpenAI investments, situational awareness, and more.

Read the full issue here: posit.co/blog/2025-10...
October 10, 2025 at 2:05 PM
Seriously cool stuff from @shikokuchuo.net on mirai+ellmer+shiny+httr2 with otel for telemetry at Shiny in Production!

You can use it to improve the performance of your Shiny apps by getting really granular information about it what's going on!

#rstats
October 9, 2025 at 9:44 AM
A delightfully concise history of #rstats from @colinfay.bsky.social at Shiny in Production 🔥
October 9, 2025 at 8:57 AM
Piano lesson was awesome this afternoon & reminded me of why it's way more fun as an adult - my teacher is on board with my goal of "learning stuff to play that my friends & I can sing along to when drinking" and was very enthusiastic when I sheepishly admitted I've been learning Mr Brightside! 🎹🥳 🍸
October 7, 2025 at 3:18 PM
Just added Air to the Arrow CI jobs 🪂

It's an R formatter written in Rust, and so fast I genuinely had a "wtf?!" moment the first time I used it.

Would love to see a similar linter; if I had the time, I'd love to try building one - need to get acquainted with tree-sitters one day! 🌳

#rstats
October 7, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Loooove this post by @veerle.hypebright.nl on Shiny and LLMs! 🤖

shiny.posit.co/blog/posts/s...

⚡️ Handle requests asynchronously so multiple users don't block each other
⚡️ Provide visual feedback when components are loading
⚡️ Catch errors & display user-friendly messages

#rstats #llms #shiny
Shiny - Build Your First LLM App with Shiny for Python or R
Shiny is a package that makes it easy to create interactive web apps using R and Python.
shiny.posit.co
October 7, 2025 at 6:21 AM
🤩 My code produced when using LLMs to work on #rstats code got waaaaay better after I read this blog post by @simonpcouch.com on his Claude setup!

www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-07...
How I’m using Claude Code to write R code | Simon P. Couch – Simon P. Couch
www.simonpcouch.com
October 2, 2025 at 12:56 PM
Apache Arrow will be 10 soon! 🥳

At the Arrow summit, PMC chair @enpiar.bsky.social reflects on the keys to longevity:

⭐ Social components are as important as the technical
⭐ Build relationships with other projects & make newcomers feel welcome & empowered
⭐ Culture is what makes the difference
October 2, 2025 at 9:44 AM
At #positconf, it was the Pacman rule, and at #pydata Paris, it's the camembert rule! 😁🤣
September 30, 2025 at 8:03 AM
Reposted by Nic Crane
I’ve just received permission to make a PR against a repo I’ve been dreaming of making for EIGHT YEARS.

I couldn’t be happier. And it’s all thanks to @niccrane.bsky.social

More details at Shiny in Production 😄
September 26, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Reposted by Nic Crane
I'm exited to announce a new resource about making slides with quarto and revealjs. This book is the combination of all the work I have done in this area, reordered and polished up

There isn't a lot of new information yet, but this format allows me to add more easily

slidecrafting-book.com
#quarto
September 24, 2025 at 4:12 PM
I'm considering writing a proposal for R Consortium ISC funding to write a free & open source book on LLMs/AI in R. Advice out there is scattered between different resources. Wondering if this is something the wider #rstats community would be interested in, & what folks would like to see in there?
September 20, 2025 at 9:47 PM
If you've ever gotten stuck with {renv} you need to check out Shannon Pileggi's talk at #PositConf25 - learning soooo much! #rstats
September 18, 2025 at 3:06 PM
Learning some really cool stuff about running parallel purrr locally with mirai at #PositConf2025
September 18, 2025 at 2:35 PM
I brought a couple of extra copies of my book 'Scaling Up with R and Arrow' to share with folks at #positconf, which are free to the first couple of people to give me a shout in person! 🏹
September 18, 2025 at 2:07 PM
Reposted by Nic Crane
Jonathan McPherson just mentioned datapasta at the opening keynote of #positconf, so I'm sharing this once again to share the magic, for all those discovering it for the very first time ❤️

#databs #rstats
🍝 A package I love, {datapasta}, came up at #CascadiaRconf this weekend, so I wanted to share a little example of it in action. It's an addin (but also a pkg w/ some funcs), so showing is better than sharing code. Thanks for the awesome pkg, @milesmcbain.bsky.social! #rstats #databs
September 17, 2025 at 1:47 PM
Landed in Atlanta for posit::conf(2025)! ✈️

Excited to catch up with old friends & meet new ones!

I also have consulting capacity available for 2026; if you'd like to talk about working together, get in touch.

Also on lookout for collabs; main focuses:

1. Arrow / Parquet / DuckDB
2. LLMs in R
September 16, 2025 at 3:23 PM
Reposted by Nic Crane
We’re thrilled to have @niccrane.bsky.social and @christophscheuch.bsky.social join our team to co-develop our flagship async course, SynergiZing ML & LLMs in R.

We’ve also welcomed @albertrapp.bsky.social to lead our monthly membership track.

👉 Early access updates here: athlyticz.com/ai-signup
SynergiZing ML & LLMs in R — tidymodels, RAG, Shiny | Athlyticz
Waitlist open for Athlyticz’s async R course: tidymodels + LLMs (RAG, tool-calling, evals) and Shiny/vetiver deployment—by Nic Crane & Christoph Scheuch.
athlyticz.com
September 16, 2025 at 12:45 PM