Lately I’ve been doing more and more maps with ggplot2 and R Statistics language. 🗺

R is good because everything is written in the script. No clicking through windows with the join, then having to fix things in the composer. Instead, it’s just a few lines of code, which you can reuse over and over again. And usually with ggplot2, things look pretty good right out of the box — and if you are unhappy with the output, tweak a line and re-run it in R’s interactive interpreter.  Plus, you get outputted those great SVG graphics, which usually are small and look good regardless of the size of the screens.

Point and click is great, especially when you don’t have the time to learn how to program or use an API but nothing really beats the speed of a good API, backed up by code that automates things puts out quality output with minimal tweaking.