R help - Sep 2022 - How long does it take to learn the R programming language?

Subject: How long does it take to learn the R programming language?

Good day from Singapore,

How long does it take to learn the R programming language?

Is it easy? Is there a steep learning curve?

Thank you.

Regards,

Mr. Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming
Targeted Individual in Singapore
Blogs:
https://tdtemcerts.blogspot.com
https://tdtemcerts.wordpress.com

The basics can be learnt in a short time.  The easiest way I found and have used
to train a number in my team is to use the R library Swirl as a walkthrough.
https://swirlstats.com/

Basically 
>install.packages("swirl")
>library("swirl")
>swirl()
... and then follow the on-screen guide.

Steve P

Hello,

Inline

?s 04:14 de 26/09/2022, Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming
escreveu:
> Subject: How long does it take to learn the R programming language?
> 
> Good day from Singapore,
> 
> How long does it take to learn the R programming language?
> 
> Is it easy? 
The basics, yes.

Is there a steep learning curve?

Right after the basics, yes, for a (short?) while.
I don't know if this is true but it is said that once you are 
comfortable with help("lapply"), you've made it.

Hope this helps,

Rui Barradas
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Mr. Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming
> Targeted Individual in Singapore
> Blogs:
> https://tdtemcerts.blogspot.com
> https://tdtemcerts.wordpress.com
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide 
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

Q: How long does it take to learn English?

A: You never finish... the real question is what do you need to do and can you
do that, and you have to ask yourself that. Everyone tackles it at their own
pace.

On September 25, 2022 8:14:57 PM PDT, Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming <ceo at
teo-en-ming-corp.com> wrote:
>Subject: How long does it take to learn the R programming language?
>
>Good day from Singapore,
>
>How long does it take to learn the R programming language?
>
>Is it easy? Is there a steep learning curve?
>
>Thank you.
>
>Regards,
>
>Mr. Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming
>Targeted Individual in Singapore
>Blogs:
>https://tdtemcerts.blogspot.com
>https://tdtemcerts.wordpress.com
>
>______________________________________________
>R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
>https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
-- 
Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.

On Mon, 26 Sep 2022 11:14:57 +0800
Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming <ceo at teo-en-ming-corp.com> wrote:
> Subject: How long does it take to learn the R programming language?
> 
> Good day from Singapore,
> 
> How long does it take to learn the R programming language?
How long is a piece of string? :-)

cheers,

Rolf Turner

-- 
Honorary Research Fellow
Department of Statistics
University of Auckland
Phone: +64-9-373-7599 ext. 88276

If I could speak for myself, I first heard of R in 2018, when a Course on
biostatistics was offered to the Health Secretariat in my State (Minas
Gerais, Brazil). At that time, I found the software complex:

"... its use will require an understanding of its operation, which implies
knowing how it works with data and the proper nomenclature that it gives to
its objects and the proper syntax of its functions to perform analyzes on
its objects. It seemed like a lot of truck for our little sand, that is, it
would be like learning to drive a truck or pilot a ship, when, in our case,
a wheelbarrow or a Kombi does the job."

One year later, I revised my concepts:

" Now I know a little more about R. Although the initial interface seems
arid, with the > symbol waiting for us to type something, with a little
knowledge of how the program is organized, it is possible to obtain graphs
and maps, with much greater plasticity than achieved with TerraView, for
example. It is a powerful tool, with the availability of numerous packages,
which greatly expand the possibilities of analysis.
Furthermore, the software and packages are accessible, that is, they are not
paid, and there is a vast amount of content on the internet about how to
work with the tool.
So I review the perception I had a year ago, and I now understand that
mastering the tool is essential for us to manipulate data and carry out
analyzes within the secretariat."

Today I can handle some tasks within R, although I can say I have not
learned it yet. In the next IACR?s (International Association of Cancer
Registries) Scientific Conference, I will present an abstract concluding
that "Software R has proved to be a valuable tool for analyzing registry
data. It could easily handle mortality system databases, with almost 200
thousand lines, each year. The use of this software should be encouraged in
the registries, although at first it may seem difficult to use."

Gil Pena
Coordenador do Registro de C?ncer de Base Populacional de Belo Horizonte
Coordena??o de Vigil?ncia do C?ncer
Diretoria de Informa??es Epidemiol?gicas
Superintend?ncia de Vigil?ncia Epidemiol?gica
Subsecretaria de Vigil?ncia em Sa?de
Secretaria de Estado da Sa?de - Governo de Minas Gerais

How long does it take to learn R?
Meaningless question.
Who is learning?
Are they new to programming?
What other programming languages do they know?
Are they new to statistics?
What other statistics environments do they know?
Are they learning by themselves?
Do they have a mentor?
Fellow students?
Which textbooks are they using?

I found R very easy to learn, but I was
already familiar with dozens of programming
languages and the SPSS, GLIM, and Genstat
statistics environments, so my experience
will probably mean nothing for you.

The R *language* can be thought of as
covering several different things:
(1) Basic R *DATA STRUCTURES*.
By this I mean logical, integer, real,
complex and character vectors and arrays
(R doesn't actually have scalars) and lists.
This is where R differs most from most
other programming languages except (S of
course and) APL and perhaps Matlab.
(2) R *CONTROL STRUCTURES*.  The syntax
of R and how you write functions in R.
R looks a lot like C/Java/Perl except
where it doesn't, and the most different
aspect of R here is function parameters
(which resemble Lisp) and the way parameters
are passed.
(3) How R data structures are EXTENDED.
The S3 and S4 "object" systems.  Some of
the things like data frames, dates and times,
time series, models, and so on built on these.
(4) Reflection and namespaces.
At this point, you could be said to have mastered
the R *language*.  It is not a big or complex
language.  It's much simpler than C++ or C#.
However, R comes with a range of testing and
documentation tools.  And there is a DAUNTING
range of packages for an astounding range of
statistical and graphical applications.


This is actually my plan for learning any
programming language:
- basic data structures
- basic control structures
- basic debugging techniques
- data structure extension methods
- control structure extension methods
- testing and documentation tools

A word about existing code bases.
R code tends to be written by people with
a great deal of knowledge and insight about
the algorithms they are coding and the
applications they are coding for.
R encourages the development of good
documentation for people who are USING the
code, with examples and vignettes and all that.
However, most of the people are NOT software
engineers and are not writing code with the
dominant idea that someone else will have to
come to understand the inner workings of the
code well enough to maintain it without them.
(This is also true of pretty much all the
Java and C# code I've ever seen, which is too
much of it.)  If you look at an existing
package and find it hard to understand, that
doesn't necessarily mean you haven't learned
enough yet.  Maybe it just *is* hard to
understand because it was written to be useful,
not to be educational.

On Wed, 28 Sept 2022 at 04:13, Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming <
ceo at teo-en-ming-corp.com> wrote:
> Subject: How long does it take to learn the R programming language?
>
> Good day from Singapore,
>
> How long does it take to learn the R programming language?
>
> Is it easy? Is there a steep learning curve?
>
> Thank you.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mr. Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming
> Targeted Individual in Singapore
> Blogs:
> https://tdtemcerts.blogspot.com
> https://tdtemcerts.wordpress.com
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
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