221–230 of 266 posts
Reason I use scripting languages over excel: I don't want to pay for excel, or a machine that will run it.
If you need to do something once, use a GUI (Excel). If you need to do something ten times, use hotkeys and shortcuts. If you need to do something a hundred times, write a script (R). I usually use the command line as the example for why writing code and scripts are better than the more intuitive and lower-learning-curve GUIs. If I want to move a file from one folder to another then I just drag it across. Easy. If I…
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The syntax issues yeah that was a mistake to include. Although my confusion about = and Far more severe is the scant documentation online. Don't take this as an attack on the language or community. I'm a huge fan of Standard ML and it's arguably in a worse state! I was interested in supporting R in the first place because I knew of its importance (if only vaguely).
Really, really confused about your take on documentation. 9/10 you have documentation in the form of a pkgdown site with examples, parameter definitions, change log, articles, etc. Here’s a good example: https://dplyr.tidyverse.org Equally confused about your take on the community. R community is sort of a perfect example of an inclusive community actively trying to include everyone with organizations like “rladies”…
Then I went looking for how to interact with JSON. There's no builtin library I guess but rjson seems to be what people use. There's no official documentation I can find on how to install a package but there are many blog posts. The rjson's only official documentation seems to be in PDF and again it's pretty minimal: https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/rjson/rjson.pdf.
Again, to be fair, anyone looking into Common Lisp or Standard ML or OCaml would probably feel the exact same way about their ecosystems.
Does it cause a problem for existing users? Probably not. Is it the friendliest thing for first-timers to get into? Probably not. Is that a problem? Again probably not?
If you need to do something once, use a GUI (Excel). If you need to do something ten times, use hotkeys and shortcuts. If you need to do something a hundred times, write a script (R). I usually use the command line as the example for why writing code and scripts are better than the more intuitive and lower-learning-curve GUIs. If I want to move a file from one folder to another then I just drag it across. Easy. If I…
Also, if you need to do something (even once) and have to know how you did it three months later, write a script.
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You highlight four issues: 1. Documentation is accessible via the interpreter. You can type ?funcname to get documentation or ?libname for the entry point for almost every library, or use the Help tab in RStudio, the most common interpreter. Package documentation is typically hyperlinked text and of a high quality. You can also see syndicated versions of library documentation online in HTML format. Here is for instan…
The syntax issues yeah that was a mistake to include. Although my confusion about = and Far more severe is the scant documentation online. Don't take this as an attack on the language or community. I'm a huge fan of Standard ML and it's arguably in a worse state! I was interested in supporting R in the first place because I knew of its importance (if only vaguely).
If it’s statistical methods, then you’ll need to look outside of R because R documentation isn’t trying to teach statistical methods.
You can try [1] the series of books teaching statistical methods using R.
In my stats degree we learned R methods alongside the statistical methods. R, to us at the undergrad level, is a fancy calculator. Yes it has functions and can do some “programming,” but it’s purpose is to facilitate using statistical methods and writing up reports.
If the audience of your IDE is programmers who want to do data analysis, then I think that’s a different audience than statisticians, who I think are the majority of users of R. R studio is already a decent IDE that statisticians are familiar with, so it might be a hard group to get to switch.
The syntax in R isn’t great. There are multiple ways of sub setting that depend on the data type you're subsetting.
Many of the top stats programs have notes on R or courses designed to teach R that are freely accessible on the internet.
[1] https://www.routledge.com/Chapman--HallCRC-The-R-Series/book...
If you need to do something once, use a GUI (Excel). If you need to do something ten times, use hotkeys and shortcuts. If you need to do something a hundred times, write a script (R). I usually use the command line as the example for why writing code and scripts are better than the more intuitive and lower-learning-curve GUIs. If I want to move a file from one folder to another then I just drag it across. Easy. If I…
I often write a script even if I only have to do something twice. In this case, the point is not to save time, it's to be secure in the knowledge that I did the thing in exactly the same way both times, because it was the same script that did it both times. (And then it saves time anyway, because it turns out I had to do the thing 20 more times after all.)
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Really, really confused about your take on documentation. 9/10 you have documentation in the form of a pkgdown site with examples, parameter definitions, change log, articles, etc. Here’s a good example: https://dplyr.tidyverse.org Equally confused about your take on the community. R community is sort of a perfect example of an inclusive community actively trying to include everyone with organizations like “rladies”…
In the first place, I went looking for information on assignment operators in R. There's no canonical source I can find. There's an ETH edu site that looks pretty old that seems to describe it well, but it's definitely still very minimal: https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-patched/library/base/html/as... . Is this even the right documentation? I don't know. (I'm not asking you, I'm sharing my thought process.) Then I we…
There are manuals that you can find there.
R Studio (the IDE): https://www.rstudio.com/
R Studio cheat sheets: https://www.rstudio.com/resources/cheatsheets/
There is usually enough information on stack overflow / stack exchange to get through some questions. There is also a stats specific version that can sometimes be helpful. https://stats.stackexchange.com/
You are talking about documentation for user / community contributed packages. There is a minimum amount of standardization that needs to be followed, but yes, I do agree that the documentation could be better.
Hopefully this helps with installing packages: https://jtleek.com/modules/01_DataScientistToolbox/02_09_ins...
If you need to do something once, use a GUI (Excel). If you need to do something ten times, use hotkeys and shortcuts. If you need to do something a hundred times, write a script (R). I usually use the command line as the example for why writing code and scripts are better than the more intuitive and lower-learning-curve GUIs. If I want to move a file from one folder to another then I just drag it across. Easy. If I…
I have a few of them glancing at me from the corner of my desktop and I hope to do something "over the summer".
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In the first place, I went looking for information on assignment operators in R. There's no canonical source I can find. There's an ETH edu site that looks pretty old that seems to describe it well, but it's definitely still very minimal: https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-patched/library/base/html/as... . Is this even the right documentation? I don't know. (I'm not asking you, I'm sharing my thought process.) Then I we…
Are you using R or R Studio? R: https://www.r-project.org/ There are manuals that you can find there. R Studio (the IDE): https://www.rstudio.com/ R Studio cheat sheets: https://www.rstudio.com/resources/cheatsheets/ There is usually enough information on stack overflow / stack exchange to get through some questions. There is also a stats specific version that can sometimes be helpful. https://stats.stackexchange.com…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really, really confused about your take on documentation. 9/10 you have documentation in the form of a pkgdown site with examples, parameter definitions, change log, articles, etc. Here’s a good example: https://dplyr.tidyverse.org Equally confused about your take on the community. R community is sort of a perfect example of an inclusive community actively trying to include everyone with organizations like “rladies”…
In the first place, I went looking for information on assignment operators in R. There's no canonical source I can find. There's an ETH edu site that looks pretty old that seems to describe it well, but it's definitely still very minimal: https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-patched/library/base/html/as... . Is this even the right documentation? I don't know. (I'm not asking you, I'm sharing my thought process.) Then I we…
Regarding first timers, I think that once they’re aware of RStudio and the content they put out, learning becomes much more friendly and modern.
Still, I definitely agree and would appreciate a modern manual on base R.