Does installing more R packages lead to performance issues

Question

If you install more packages in R could this lead to possible performance issues in R? For example if I had 1000 packages installed instead of 10 could loading a package up with:

 library('package name')

Take a longer time?

Or even other functions in R take a longer time?

Answer 1

No, it should not make a difference.

The number of packages you have installed shouldn't affect the speed of functions or on the loading of a package. Installing the package doesn't put them into RAM or anything, it just installs the files on your harddrive. So the worst thing that could happen is you run out of physical space.

Now if you LOADED all 1000 packages, then you might see a performance hit as that would take up RAM.