https://simonpcouch.com/blog/ A data science blog quarto-1.9.36 Thu, 16 Apr 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-04-16-local-agents-2/ Local models are not there (yet).” It concluded like so: ]]> https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-04-16-local-agents-2/ Thu, 16 Apr 2026 05:00:00 GMT https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-03-06-nes/ forested package into my R environment. It has a bunch of measurements of forest attributes across Washington State: ]]> https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-03-06-nes/ Fri, 06 Mar 2026 06:00:00 GMT https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-03-05-posit-ai/ Posit AI, an AI service for data scientists. This was a huge effort that spanned many teams over several months, and I’m really excited to have it out in the world. It’s really good. ]]> https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-03-05-posit-ai/ Thu, 05 Mar 2026 06:00:00 GMT https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-01-20-cc-impact/ this blog post from Our World in Data’s Hannah Ritchie. On the electricity front: ]]> https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-01-20-cc-impact/ Tue, 20 Jan 2026 06:00:00 GMT https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-12-10-chores-0-3-0/ https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-12-10-chores-0-3-0/ Wed, 10 Dec 2025 06:00:00 GMT https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-12-04-local-agents/ https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-12-04-local-agents/ Thu, 04 Dec 2025 06:00:00 GMT https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-12-03-wrapped-databot/ group_by() %>% summarize() on my own music listening data each year.) ]]> https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-12-03-wrapped-databot/ Wed, 03 Dec 2025 06:00:00 GMT https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-11-26-bluffbench/ This post is a cross-post of a post on the Posit Blog, co-written with Sara Altman. ]]> https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-11-26-bluffbench/ Wed, 26 Nov 2025 06:00:00 GMT https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-11-11-sidekick/ side::kick(), an experimental coding agent for RStudio users, built entirely in R. It can interact with your files, talk to your active R session, and run code. ]]> https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-11-11-sidekick/ Tue, 11 Nov 2025 06:00:00 GMT https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-10-08-newsletter/ Sara Altman and I started working on an internal newsletter in June; released every two weeks, we’d give the most concise possible synopsis of movements within the company as well as the news from the wider space that we were paying the closest attention to. ]]> https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-10-08-newsletter/ Wed, 08 Oct 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-08-26-predictive/ tidymodels::install_tidymodels() again and again. That function does not exist. If it did, there’d be some serious chicken and egg happening. This thing was goofy. ]]> https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-08-26-predictive/ Tue, 26 Aug 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-08-14-mcptools/ cross-post from tidyverse.org. ]]> https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-08-14-mcptools/ Thu, 14 Aug 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-07-17-claude-code-2/ wrote a bit about how I was using Claude Code to help me write R code. At the time, I mostly just shared my impressions of working with the tool and some prompting tips. In the month or two after I wrote the post, my usage waned; I was mostly back to using LLMs only for shorter, more narrowly-scoped tasks. A few weeks ago, though, we put together some tooling that has helped me get much more out of the tool and thus made me interested in using it more often again. ]]> https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-07-17-claude-code-2/ Thu, 17 Jul 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-07-14-kimi-k2/ Kimi K2. From 30,000 feet: ]]> https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-07-14-kimi-k2/ Mon, 14 Jul 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-05-27-claude-4/ Claude 4 dropped on Thursday! Given that Claude 3.7 Sonnet is my daily driver LLM for R coding, I’ve been excited to poke at it. ]]> https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-05-27-claude-4/ Tue, 27 May 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-05-21-gemini-2-5-flash/ really made a splash. The model has become many folks’ daily driver, and I’ve started to see “What about Gemini?” in the comments of each of these blog posts if they don’t explicitly call out the model series in the title. Yesterday, Google announced an update of the preview for Gemini 2.5 Flash, a smaller and cheaper version of 2.5 Pro. ]]> https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-05-21-gemini-2-5-flash/ Wed, 21 May 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-05-07-gemini-2-5-pro-new/ Google’s release post on the newest Gemini 2.5 Pro release is “even better coding performance.” Reading this, I was curious whether we’d see a notable increase in performance compared to the last generation on R coding tasks; in an earlier post, I saw that the March release of Gemini 2.5 Pro was a contender with Claude 3.7 Sonnet on An R Eval, a dataset of challenging R coding problems. ]]> https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-05-07-gemini-2-5-pro-new/ Wed, 07 May 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-04-18-o3-o4-mini/ Codex, a new Claude Code competitor from OpenAI. In short, OpenAI wants market share among developers. ]]> https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-04-18-o3-o4-mini/ Fri, 18 Apr 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-04-15-gpt-4-1/ a new series of models called GPT 4.1, 4.1 mini, and GPT 4.1 nano. This line from their release post, specifically, caught my eye: ]]> https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-04-15-gpt-4-1/ Tue, 15 Apr 2025 05:00:00 GMT https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-04-11-chores/ here. ]]> https://simonpcouch.com/blog/2025-04-11-chores/ Fri, 11 Apr 2025 05:00:00 GMT