rjd3highfreq
rjd3highfreq ships whatever the Java side ships, and only occasionally says what that was.
Comparison · Analytics
fastplyr vs vellum
A side-by-side editorial comparison of fastplyr and vellum — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
fastplyr vs vellum: at a glance
What is fastplyr?
A fast dplyr stand-in that keeps finding new places to skip work entirely.
fastplyr reimplements the dplyr verbs on a faster backend, exposing f_summarise, f_mutate, f_reframe and a set of group metadata helpers alongside optimized joins and quantiles. The most recent release removes non-API C functions and raises the floor to R 4.5.0, a steep requirement that follows the C++17 requirement introduced a release earlier. The verb surface itself has been stable since 0.9.0.
What is vellum?
vellum's bugs are now found by using it, not testing it — the downstream grammar is doing the QA.
The rendering engine shipped nine releases in the two weeks around the end of July, six of them on a single day. Almost every entry is a correctness fix in a capability that worked when drawn and failed when measured, or worked in isolation and failed in composition. The release notes are unusually forensic: each one states the mechanism, the observable symptom, and why the fix mirrors the draw path rather than reimplementing it.
fastplyr vs vellum: editorial side-by-side
fastplyr
0.0ANALYTICS
A fast dplyr stand-in that keeps finding new places to skip work entirely.
◆ Current state
fastplyr reimplements the dplyr verbs on a faster backend, exposing f_summarise, f_mutate, f_reframe and a set of group metadata helpers alongside optimized joins and quantiles. The most recent release removes non-API C functions and raises the floor to R 4.5.0, a steep requirement that follows the C++17 requirement introduced a release earlier. The verb surface itself has been stable since 0.9.0.
◆ Where it's heading
The optimization strategy has shifted from making individual functions fast to reasoning about expressions before evaluating them — 0.9.9 began marking simple operators as group-unaware so expressions built only from them are evaluated across the whole data frame rather than per group. That is a structural bet: the package increasingly inspects what you wrote to decide how much work is actually needed. Running alongside it is a steady tightening of build requirements, with C++17, R 4.5.0 and CRAN's C API rules all landing within a year.
◆ Prediction
Expect the group-unaware classification to widen to more functions, since each addition compounds across every grouped expression, and expect the dependency floors to keep rising as the package tracks CRAN's compiled-code policy.
vellum
5.0ANALYTICS
vellum's bugs are now found by using it, not testing it — the downstream grammar is doing the QA.
◆ Current state
The rendering engine shipped nine releases in the two weeks around the end of July, six of them on a single day. Almost every entry is a correctness fix in a capability that worked when drawn and failed when measured, or worked in isolation and failed in composition. The release notes are unusually forensic: each one states the mechanism, the observable symptom, and why the fix mirrors the draw path rather than reimplementing it.
◆ Where it's heading
The pivotal detail is stated outright in 0.6.3 — the first bug in the series found by using the engine from vellumplot rather than testing it in isolation. Every release since names the downstream as the source: the contrast rule's false positives, the lint rules that fired on all five sample plots, the keyed roundrect batch. A rendering engine with a real grammar built on top of it is now getting the integration coverage that unit tests structurally cannot provide, and the fixes are converging on one theme: the measurement path and the draw path must not drift.
◆ Prediction
Expect the release rate to fall as the vellumplot integration surface is exhausted, with remaining work concentrated in the lint rule set now that it is meant to gate builds rather than just inform.
Alternatives to fastplyr and vellum
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either fastplyr or vellum.
audubon
audubon's release feed is almost entirely Renovate bumping the JavaScript toolchain behind its Japanese text splitter.
affiner
affiner is quietly turning a grid transformation helper into a small computational geometry library.
ageproR
ageproR spent two years chasing a moving file format, then added the recruitment models that justify the effort.
r-ledger
ledger adds a Rust toolchain fallback, so beancount imports work whether or not the Python tooling is installed.
gridpattern
gridpattern keeps widening its catalogue, and the newest patterns finally use the device's own line rendering.
See all fastplyr alternatives → · See all vellum alternatives →
Recent activity from fastplyr and vellum
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 11d agovellumLinter grows to 20 rules and stops firing on every plot
- 13d agovellumAnimated SVGs no longer blink once and vanish or play in reverse
- 13d agovellumPick table now reports device pixels instead of two coordinate systems
- 14d agovellumContrast rule stops flagging every plot; gridlines become PDF artifacts
- 14d agovellumgrobwidth and grobheight now measure wrapped text, not the unwrapped line
- 14d agovellumKeyed roundrect becomes a real batch after downstream integration exposes it
- 4mo agofastplyrNon-API C functions dropped, R 4.5.0 now required
- 8mo agofastplyrIn-place sorting arrives with a C++17 requirement
- 10mo agofastplyrGroup-unaware expressions evaluated on the whole frame
- 1y agofastplyrf_mutate and f_reframe complete the verb set
- 1y agofastplyrDynamic argument evaluation and f_pull
- 1y agofastplyrf_fill added and grouped joins repaired
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between fastplyr and vellum?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. vellum is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is fastplyr better than vellum?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. vellum is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to fastplyr?
Top fastplyr alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "fastplyr alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/fastplyr for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to vellum?
Top vellum alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "vellum alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/vellum-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.