Teaching R Markdown vs. Quarto?

[djvill]

I teach a graduate data science class that includes learning about reproducible research; we primarily use R in RStudio, and in the past I've used R Markdown both as a topic itself and as a teaching tool (e.g., for handouts). My average student is quite new to programming, needs a good deal of scaffolding, and will be a light-to-moderate R user. For a class starting this month, what are the pros and cons of teaching students about R Markdown vs. Quarto?

[cscheid]

We have an FAQ here https://quarto.org/docs/faq/rmarkdown.html

[djvill]

The FAQ doesn't address my question.

…

On Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 1:09 PM Carlos Scheidegger ***@***.***> wrote: We have an FAQ here https://quarto.org/docs/faq/rmarkdown.html — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1848 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AFI34QS3ML2ZH2MSIRC6UJDVY2ALTANCNFSM56MFXUDQ> . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[mcanouil]

The FAQ contains the main questions and comparisons about formats which should help you decide.
In the end, you have to decide for yourself and make a choice which can evolve.

Because Quarto was release this summer, only workshops were given so far, thus I don't think you are likely to get "pros and cons of teaching students".

More contents with blog posts, workshos and tutorials: https://github.com/mcanouil/awesome-quarto#contents

[camilogarciabotero]

Hey,

I had a similar experience and found that Quarto is actually much better for beginners. The visual editor in Rstudio is a nice transition and there is a lot of autocompletion in the YAML that reduces the leap into dynamic documents. There is another discussion about the difference coming from Rmarkdown. I also found this post. I Hope this helps you!

[richardjtelford]

I've moved from teaching student how to use rmarkdown to quarto.

For me the main advantages were

• not needing to have to worry about html_document vs bookdown::html_document2 for cross-references
• easy integration of python julia etc
• future proofing

Only disadvantage I've had is needing to install quarto - some of my students don't have admin permission to do this.

My tutorial is at https://biostats-r.github.io/biostats/quarto/

[january3]

I am not planning to move from Rmarkdown to quarto in beginners classes, because this imposes an additional layer of complexity – installing quarto in addition to Rstudio and R, making sure that Rstudio version used supports quarto etc. With a hundred students, this would cause mayhem. It is bad as it is already, there is always 10% students who have trouble installing R/Rstudio as well as Rtools / developer tools and libraries (especially with Windows). I will wait another year at least with the transition.