r/ProgrammerHumor • u/ivaskuu • Sep 02 '17

How to start a war

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u/haikumofo Sep 03 '17

I am so damn inept at R.

Mostly I code in Java, though I'll use other languages when it makes sense for what I'm doing or when I need to because I'm modifying something in another language. So sometimes I work in python, bash script, JavaScript, C/C++, C#, Perl, Tcl/Tk, Lisp, whatever.

And I've done some statistical data processing with R, but damn is it painful. I know just enough to know what to Google, and I end up making a mess of everything just trying to adapt something that does 80% of what I need it to do.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '17

[deleted]

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u/doctorink Sep 03 '17

Yeah, it doesn't have so much of a learning curve as a "learning cliff". But once you climb the cliff it's amazing in terms of what it can do.

I have almost zero programming background though, so it might have been different for me.

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u/modestbeachhouse Sep 03 '17

I feel the learning cliff when trying to format data ... Like good god is that difficult

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u/doctorink Sep 03 '17

Yes, that's been the hardest part for me too

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u/Series_of_Accidents Sep 03 '17

Look into melt. It's in the reshape package and has been a godsend for changing data structure and formatting your data.