4 ms·

This sounds like the experience of a beginning programmer learning pretty-much any popular scripting language. > I found that regular expressions ... are a gre

by Pitarou 14y ago

This sounds like the experience of a beginning programmer learning pretty-much any popular scripting language. > I found that regular expressions ... are a great way to isolate the string that one is looking for... Well I never! I'm not criticising the guy who wrote this, but I don't know why this has been voted up on Hacker News.

capex 14y ago
This is a good place for 'And I am no man' from Lord of the Rings. The author appears to be a female, not a guy.
Schwolop 14y ago
To be honest, I found the entire coursera course on programming for data analytics to be in the same vein. So much time was spent explaining what each optional parameter to a function did that I skipped at least 50% of each lecture.
- aheilbut 14y ago
  A big problem with R is that much too much semantics gets buried in critical optional parameters to functions.
- bcbrown 14y ago
  Same here, I gave up. I'd rather read about the syntax. Save the lectures for concepts that are hard to get across in text. I thought part of the problem was that the course was geared towards grad students for whom this might be their first programming language, as opposed to programmer who already know a couple languages.
  - mogrim 14y ago
    Not convinced, the non-programmers on the discussion boards were having real problems... Certainly wasn't the best course I've done on Coursera, although it did "force" me to learn R, so in that sense it achieved its aim.
  - pseut 14y ago
    I have to ask, why would a programmer want to learn R as a language? Why not just learn statistics?
    - bcbrown 14y ago
      I'm also reading statistics texts. I've had colleagues use R for visualizations, and another tool in the toolbox is always good. But some of the design decisions made me recoil, and I think I'll skip it until I have a need for it at work.
  - groovy2shoes 14y ago
    I've been considering dropping the class as well. The course definitely seems like an R class for statisticians, whereas I am a programmer hoping to learn more about statistics. I'm trying to stick with it but I don't feel as though the course has been beneficial thus far.
    - Schwolop 14y ago
      I just skimmed through all the videos and then moved on to https://class.coursera.org/dataanalysis-001 https://class.coursera.org/dataanalysis-001 instead. It's from the same university, but it's much more "here are the statistical concepts, and I'll show you an implementation in R" rather than "here's the syntax for the R command that solves this particular riddle." Much better value for time!

by Pitarou 14y ago

capex 14y ago

This is a good place for 'And I am no man' from Lord of the Rings. The author appears to be a female, not a guy.

Schwolop 14y ago

To be honest, I found the entire coursera course on programming for data analytics to be in the same vein. So much time was spent explaining what each optional parameter to a function did that I skipped at least 50% of each lecture.

aheilbut 14y ago
A big problem with R is that much too much semantics gets buried in critical optional parameters to functions.
bcbrown 14y ago
Same here, I gave up. I'd rather read about the syntax. Save the lectures for concepts that are hard to get across in text. I thought part of the problem was that the course was geared towards grad students for whom this might be their first programming language, as opposed to programmer who already know a couple languages.
- mogrim 14y ago
  Not convinced, the non-programmers on the discussion boards were having real problems... Certainly wasn't the best course I've done on Coursera, although it did "force" me to learn R, so in that sense it achieved its aim.
- pseut 14y ago
  I have to ask, why would a programmer want to learn R as a language? Why not just learn statistics?
  - bcbrown 14y ago
    I'm also reading statistics texts. I've had colleagues use R for visualizations, and another tool in the toolbox is always good. But some of the design decisions made me recoil, and I think I'll skip it until I have a need for it at work.
- groovy2shoes 14y ago
  I've been considering dropping the class as well. The course definitely seems like an R class for statisticians, whereas I am a programmer hoping to learn more about statistics. I'm trying to stick with it but I don't feel as though the course has been beneficial thus far.
  - Schwolop 14y ago
    I just skimmed through all the videos and then moved on to https://class.coursera.org/dataanalysis-001 https://class.coursera.org/dataanalysis-001 instead. It's from the same university, but it's much more "here are the statistical concepts, and I'll show you an implementation in R" rather than "here's the syntax for the R command that solves this particular riddle." Much better value for time!