[R] How to understand the mentality behind tidyverse and ggplot2?

[C W]

Dear R list,

I am an old-school R user. I use apply(), with(), and which() in base
package instead of filter(), select(), separate() in Tidyverse. The idea of
pipeline (i.e. %>%) my code was foreign to me for a while. It makes the
code shorter, but sometimes less readable?

With ggplot2, I just don't understand how it is organized. Take this code:

> ggplot(diamonds, aes(x=carat, y=price)) + geom_point(aes(color=cut)) +
geom_smooth()

There are three plus signs. How do you know when to "add" and what to
"add"? I've seen more plus signs.

To me, aes() stands for aesthetic, meaning looks. So, anything related to
looks like points and smooth should be in aes(). Apparently, it's not the
case.

So, how does ggplot2 work? Could someone explain this for an old-school R
user?

Thank you!

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]