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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

by tylurp 5y ago

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 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” for women in tech.

eatonphil 5y ago
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/assignOps.html 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 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 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?
- wheelinsupial 5y ago
  Are you using R or R Studio? R: https://www.r-project.org/ https://www.r-project.org/ There are manuals that you can find there. R Studio (the IDE): https://www.rstudio.com/ https://www.rstudio.com/ R Studio cheat sheets: https://www.rstudio.com/resources/cheatsheets/ 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/ 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_installingRPackages/#1 https://jtleek.com/modules/01_DataScientistToolbox/02_09_ins...
  - eatonphil 5y ago
    Thanks! I did end up figuring everything out this week I was trying to do (basics of syntax, 3rd party libraries, etc.). I posted the original comment just to document my experience on the path to figuring out these basics.
- tylurp 5y ago
  Ah, okay agreed. Documentation on base R isn’t great. I was more so coming from the perspective of packages which I realize isn’t the full picture. 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.

by tylurp 5y ago

eatonphil 5y ago

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/assignOps.html 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 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 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?

wheelinsupial 5y ago
Are you using R or R Studio? R: https://www.r-project.org/ https://www.r-project.org/ There are manuals that you can find there. R Studio (the IDE): https://www.rstudio.com/ https://www.rstudio.com/ R Studio cheat sheets: https://www.rstudio.com/resources/cheatsheets/ 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/ 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_installingRPackages/#1 https://jtleek.com/modules/01_DataScientistToolbox/02_09_ins...
- eatonphil 5y ago
  Thanks! I did end up figuring everything out this week I was trying to do (basics of syntax, 3rd party libraries, etc.). I posted the original comment just to document my experience on the path to figuring out these basics.
tylurp 5y ago
Ah, okay agreed. Documentation on base R isn’t great. I was more so coming from the perspective of packages which I realize isn’t the full picture. 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.