R versus Python for Data Science: the heated battle still rages. But is it really necessary to be partisan on this issue? I don't think so. There are strong arguments in favour of both languages and each clearly has a role to play.

My contention is that the best outcome is a compromise: interfacing the two languages allows one to leverage the strengths of both sides. There are already a few options for such an interface. However, the recently released reticulate package from RStudio kicks this capability up a number of notches. It embeds a Python session in the R environment, exposing a seamless and performant interface.

In this talk I will lay out various reasons to embrace the idea of interfacing R and Python, then show how the reticulate package makes this possible. If you use both R and Python then this can significantly simplify and accelerate your workflow.