useR! 2024

In this proposed talk, I will talk about my experience in maintaining the "boring", but arguably important, part of R: the Input and Output (I/O) infrastructure. The foci will be two packages I am currently maintaining and recently have their respective tenth anniversary: `rio` and `readODS`. In this proposed talk, I will briefly talk about how the (chaotic) I/O infrastructure of R looked like ten years ago. Then, I will talk about how the package `rio` simplifies I/O tasks with only two functions: import() and export(). I will also talk about the package `readODS`, which is designed as a silent family member of `rio` for reading and writing OpenDocument Spreadsheets (ODS), a truly open format that has been adopted by various government agencies such as NATO and EU. Then, I will talk about what has been changed in the last ten years by `rio` and `readODS`. For example, `readODS` has a performance gain of over 1000x and is the significantly faster and usable ODS reading and writing option than the offerings for Python, Julia, and Javascript. Finally, I will give an outlook of what the future of I/O infrastructure of R would look like.