iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

Because a tool that requires me to manually keep track of all file changes and upload them one by one is not a solution. Cloud storage must handle this automatically.

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

Born private, but forced to use one of the least private operting systems (Windows) because there is still no Proton Drive Linux client.

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

I had to install #Stata today to run someone else's code. Considering how quickly #software adoption changes in other fields, it is astonishing how something as outdated as Stata has managed to survive until 2026.

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

It is generally a good idea to use TeX Live via a dev container because this enforces the same setup for all coauthors. The container is compatible with but not part of the SoDa Replicator itself because it is not technically required and because it demands prior knowledge of WSL, Docker, etc. 2/2

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

Since publishing the Monash SoDa Replicator, users have told me about Windows laptops provided by their university not allowing for local TeX Live installation. Hence, I have created a dev container that circumvents this problem: github.com/cdueben/tex_.... #tex #texlive #devcontainer #vscode 1/2

github.com

GitHub - cdueben/tex_live_dev_container: Dev Container for TeX Live.

Dev Container for TeX Live. Contribute to cdueben/tex_live_dev_container development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Hence, the package itself is very quick and simple to install from source. It is easy to use and comes with a number of examples.

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

David Kreitmeir and I published the synthetic matching method from Kreitmeir et al. (2025) as an #rstats package on CRAN (cran.r-project.org/package=synt...). Whereas my other recent R packages are primarily wrappers of my C++ code, synthReturn is a full R package (Fortran only in dependencies).

cran.r-project.org

synthReturn: Synthetic Matching Method for Returns

Implements the revised Synthetic Matching Algorithm of Kreitmeir, Lane, and Raschky (2025) <<a href="https://doi.org/10.2139%2Fssrn.3751162" target="_top">doi:10.2139/ssrn.3751162</a>>, building...

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

My cppcontainers #rstats package (cran.r-project.org/package=cppc...) is back on CRAN. The functionality remains unchanged. It had just been archived on CRAN a few months ago because of NA placeholder values that threw compiler warnings in exotic builds on macOS. #cpp #datascience

cran.r-project.org

cppcontainers: 'C++' Standard Template Library Containers

Use 'C++' Standard Template Library containers interactively in R. Includes sets, unordered sets, multisets, unordered multisets, maps, unordered maps, multimaps, unordered multimaps, stacks, queues, ...

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

Enjoying my first time at @defcon.bsky.social. Amazing talks, demos, etc. so far. And I met famous journalist @jackrhysider.bsky.social whose inspiring work got me interested in #infosec in the first place. I am gathering a lot of insights for my own research.

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

#AI is even better than I am in adding seg faults to my code 😅. Maybe vibe coding a Fibonacci heap into my spatial analysis was not the best idea. #cpp

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

I tried #Positron today. Forking and customizing VS Code instead of further pushing RStudio was a good choice. RStudio is not bad, but Positron seems nicer (and better for #rstats development than VS Code itself). Good job @posit.co👍.

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

Yes, I agree, Python's package management is a terrible user experience. CRAN feels ok to users, but is a bad package developer experience 😅.

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

That depends on the field. Many people in my environment (economists) have migrated to Python. Modern R and Python packages are just C and C++ wrappers anyway. Native R and Python are not performant enough for modern tasks.

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

Statistical programs in Python tend to build on numpy and pandas. Given how mature and stable these packages are, I would not consider these dependencies a major drawback of Python nowadays. Base R also only has dense matrices. More elaborate matrix types require a package.

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

Unfortunately, Julia never gained enough traction and never developed a reasonably sophisticated package ecosystem. So, users will stick to the mediocre choices of #rstats and Python. 6/n

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

According to my own observation, there is a considerable shift from #rstats to Python among empirical researchers. A key driver of this is the Python-first nature of machine learning APIs. I think that #rstats will lose market share to Python, but it will not die soon. 5/n

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

For now, the simplicity of #rstats makes it a better choice than Python for many users who do not need the versatility of a general purpose programming language. It keeps attracting users from outdated commercial software like Stata or SPSS. 4/n

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

The poor management of CRAN does not help either. Both R Core and CRAN need to fundamentally change for #rstats remain popular. 3/n

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

Compare the release notes of base R and #Python over the course of the past years. Python is leaping forward while base R is devoid of innovation. #rstats is kept alive and thriving by its packages. Unfortunately, the severe limitations of base R also limit the scope of package development. 2/n

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

There is a lot of childish discussion on the future of #rstats recently on this platform. #rstats is my main language and I will stick to it for a while. However, posts calling it perfect and denouncing any critique as invalid are ridiculous. #rstats has flaws that can threaten its future. 1/n

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

I need to put together a deep learning model and I do not know whether I should go with #pytorch or #tensorflow + #keras. I have a little experience in the latter and none in the former. What would you recommend for someone who does not care about how pythonic a tool is?

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

I just had to install the most intrusive #software of my life. It automatically starts at boot, but does not show up in the OS's auto startup list. It does not have an exit button or settings. I have to shut down the background process in the process viewer/ task manager each time. 🫣

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

The new version of my spaths #rstats package (cran.r-project.org/package=spaths) removes the edge limit (previously 2^31 - 1). Do you need to handle 10 billion edges with custom transition functions? No problem, spaths can do that. #graph #theory

cran.r-project.org

spaths: Shortest Paths Between Points in Grids

Shortest paths between points in grids. Optional barriers and custom transition functions. Applications regarding planet Earth, as well as generally spheres and planes. Optimized for computational per...

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

😅 Considering R Core's absence of innovation in base R development, a reimplementation in Rust would certainly be a surprise.

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Over the course of the past years, I have received a number of emails asking why conleyreg (my first #rstats package) and fixest produce different results. Contributors to an issue in fixest's GitHub repo have now shown that both are economically correct. The assumptions just differ.

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

We already got complaints from a data editor when code using pre-processed data took a few hours to run on his laptop. Code on raw data does not run at all or takes weeks on end user devices.

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

I am curious to see, if data editors are ready to download a TB of data per spatial project.

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

My wife is looking for a #job in #Melbourne, Australia. - #Chemical #engineer specialized in #water #treatment - Master's degree - Multiple years of experience in water treatment and science education - Fluent in 4 - 6 languages - Can start immediately Feel free to reach out for further questions.

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

I hope the economists here forgive me for not throwing in general equilibrium. To make it accessible for non-economists, I restrict the content to very intuitive concepts.

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

I just published a #blog post on #housing #affordability: medium.com/@cdueben/the.... It aims to create a better intuition of how the housing market works. The post uses simple, non-technical language to communicate the topic to a broad audience.

medium.com

The Housing Market is a Market

An Intuitive Guide to the Economics of Housing Affordability

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

I received my absentee ballot documents for the #German #federal #election today. The election is in three days and I live in Australia. Thanks for sending this on time 😄. #Bundestagswahl #Briefwahl

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

#CRAN needs maintainer elections driven by the #Rstats community. CRAN's current maintenance is unbearable.

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

(iv) Quickly get back to a project after not having worked on it for a while - just grab an issue and start from there. (v) Cleanly split solved and unsolved issues, while keeping the documentation. (vi) Track what everyone is currently doing based on issue assignment. 2/2

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

My new way of managing my #research projects' to-do lists: #GitHub issues (with authors assigned to them). (i) More persistent than scribbled down notes from meetings and conferences. (ii) Easy to reference in code commits. (iii) Separate topic-specific written discussion with coauthors. 1/2

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

Does anyone have advice on how to reduce #political #propaganda in the feed? I welcome political news, but most of my feed is more manipulation attempt than news. Here on #Bluesky it is primarily left wing ideology, while X has also lots of right wing propaganda. How do I get a more neutral focus?

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

I am looking for contributors for my conleyreg #Rstats package. I keep getting feature requests, but am not going to do anything beyond basic maintenance myself. This is a great opportunity for aspiring R package #developers. The following issue outlines some details: github.com/cdueben/conl...

github.com

Further Development · Issue #5 · cdueben/conleyreg

conleyreg is my first R package. I developed it years ago within the scope of a paper revision. As far as I know, it remains many researchers' default choice for estimating Conley standard errors. ...

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

You could, e.g., add the A* algorithm or closeness centrality to the spaths package (github.com/cdueben/spaths), both of which are easy to implement. If you want to start smaller, you could clean up the C++ code by introducing structs.

github.com

GitHub - cdueben/spaths: Shortest Paths Between Points in Grids

Shortest Paths Between Points in Grids. Contribute to cdueben/spaths development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

You are welcome to contribute to my R packages. It is a great opportunity for anyone aspiring to transition from procedural empirical analysis code to package development. I will try to make the size of my commits more collaboration-friendly 😄. #rStats #openSource #scientificSoftware

63 changed files with 2,591 additions and 20,528 deletions

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

I will enjoy classes on #CMake to enhance my C++ knowledge this weekend.

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

If you are considering taking a weekend away from research to improve your technical skills, now is a good time. E.g., #Udemy courses are currently on sale. In case you are still using Stata, you might want to explore a more professional alternative, like #R, #Python, or #Julia.

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Learning other languages grants access to more tools to address research questions. And it often even makes you more productive in your main language, through new concepts of code design.

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Most #economists do not have formal training in #programming and usually stick to whatever language they learned as undergraduate students. In my experience, broadening the coding horizon can enhance empirical #research producitivity. A thread 🧵.

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

My new R package cppcontainers is now on CRAN: cran.r-project.org/package=cppc.... C++ STL containers in R. The package's vignette states its motivation: cran.r-project.org/web/packages.... It is my most quickly developed and most widely applicable package so far. #rstats #cpp #datascience

cran.r-project.org

cppcontainers: 'C++' Standard Template Library Containers

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 01/06/2024

Finishing up my dissertation, I wrote a tool to clean up bibtex files. Not managing my bibtex files through citation software, I find this tool pretty handy. github.com/ChristianDue... #latex #bibtex #academicpublication #research #phd #cpp #code

github.com

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Christian Düben @cdueben.bsky.social · 04/04/2024

I am happy to announce the publication of my spaths package's latest version: github.com/ChristianDue.... The software computes shortest paths in gridded data. It is heavily computationally optimized and customizable. #RStats #Cpp #GraphTheory #GIS #EconTwitter

github.com

GitHub - ChristianDueben/spaths: Shortest Paths Between Points in Grids

Shortest Paths Between Points in Grids. Contribute to ChristianDueben/spaths development by creating an account on GitHub.

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