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I think a big problem is not just the language, but how it's usually taught - in other words, I think you shouldn't need such a large vocabulary if you learn th
by hadley 14y ago
I think a big problem is not just the language, but how it's usually taught - in other words, I think you shouldn't need such a large vocabulary if you learn the right primitives (which don't always exist in base R). The lack of a solid common foundation it also what makes code readability a challenge.
Part of the problem is the base packages: as soon as you open R you have ~1600 functions you can use, and you obviously can't memorise a significant proportion of them. Learning R is as much about what you don't learn as what you do.
- rm999 14y agoGreat point, I'll have to reevaluate how I use R. My training in R was very informal and mostly involved reading other people's code, so my "vocabulary" is probably a union of other peoples' and is probably too large. Actually one thing that has helped in the past year was reading your split/apply/combine paper and using the plyr package more.
- hadley 14y agoI'm working on a curriculum for basic programming in R, hopefully that will eventually help outline what everyone should know about R, regardless of what they use it for.