Err... to R! - One more thing...

The house that code built

Simon Wallace

3 minute read

The house that code built

That is all for this series for now, hopefully you found it useful and it has started you on a coding journey. As I said at the beginning of this series R is brilliant, however to assume it will be around and the perceived “best tool for the job” forever is naive. I wasn’t only talking about another language being created in the future, but whether R is the language you feel most comfortable using right now.

In my opinion the best tool for the job in data analysis is the one you feel most comfortable using to get the job done, and so hopefully you continue to learn how to code and explore other languages should you wish. It may be you learn Python and prefer it, or after completing this series you decide you want to stick with SPSS or Excel; so long as it accomplishes what you want and need it to do that is the right tool for you.

If you have enjoyed using R and want to learn and use it more, or you decide that you now want to go and learn another language, that is exactly what I hoped this course would motivate. Again as I said at the beginning you never truly stop learning a programming language and there are so many to explore. There will be a new version, a new add on, or a new trick you discover to speed up code. For example I didn’t start using the tidyverse until fairly recently in my coding life, and whilst it required me to rethink some of my coding habits the improvement to my code is noticeable when looking back at older scripts. I have tried packages and realised I don’t like them, and there are some I have come across and I am waiting for the opportunity to dive in and give them a try. There is always something new to explore, or to try and create.

About “Err… to R!” posts

The general desire to learn a programming language is increasing. Whilst R has a fairly steep learning curve in comparison to other languages, it was designed to analyse data. Once you take into account CRAN, R is one of the most powerful analytics tools available. The goal of this course is to get you comfortable using R, and the way in which it shall be presented is such that you can hopefully learn another language - if wanted/needed - quickly as the way in which the material is presented is designed to help you understand how to learn a programming language; not just how to learn R.