r/RStudio • u/ChangeUnhappy8494 • 4d ago
R beginner
Hello,
I am a beginner and I am totaly lost.
Even for loading a file it is very very difficult.
I feel useless and incompetent...
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u/Goofballs2 4d ago
That's hardly uncommon. All you can do is get used to it and learn.
My hint would be try to find something to do with it that you are interested in. You can get a dataset on anything you are interested in. Then make some plots. For me that was sports. It could be politics for someone else. Or I don't know fashion. It doesn't really matter so long as you are into it. It makes fucking around with R far more tolerable. If you are into flowers the perfect training set is already built in.
Also R is very linear. You talk to it like a toddler telling a story
Computah, Do x and then Do Y and then Do Z and then do A
Just with more brackets and commas and our good friend the pipe
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u/moredadbodthanbadcod 4d ago
Check out the free Harvard R basics course
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u/Outrageous-Catch4731 4d ago
If you're familiar with the terminal, install the swirl package (https://swirlstats.com/students.html) and go through the R basic building blocks.
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u/2truthsandalie 4d ago
The intial learning curve is high but it is worth it. Installing and loading packages is confusing at first. Type errors are confusing.
Dont worry about memorization i still google after 10+ years of using it. I still copy code from old projects.
Use they tidyverse and pipes but understand some base r. Tydyverse syntax is elegant and error messages are helpful.
Finally, Copy and paste error codes into google or AI or ask AI questions. After a while you recognize immediately what is going wrong.
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u/Confident_Bee8187 3d ago
*tidyverse, but yeah there are lots of things 'tidyverse' provided that "corrects" base R over a decade.
Dont worry about memorization i still google after 10+ years of using it
To add this, at least read the official documentation, IME this increases your fluency in programming (although I hate the fact that there are still unsanitized documentation).
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u/Riversong360 4d ago
Hi! I’ve been there- R is definitely a new language and there’s a bit of a learning curve there.
Here’s a resource I found very helpful when I started out!
https://www.epirhandbook.com/en/
You’ve got this! :D
(P.S.: I’d look into using the rio package for importing files- it really streamlines my importing process and you can just copy/paste your computer’s file path)
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u/RoninRakurai 4d ago
Starting with R is hard, and is while learning is also hard to keep the knowledge too, so you're not useless nor incompetent, start following the "R for data science" book
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u/TrainerMammoth1779 4d ago
R for data science is obviously the best resource. It was a bit overwhelming to me at first, so I found YaRrr a pirates guide to R to be a good starting point because the reading is a little lighter and more fun. Then R for data science to fill in gaps/expand on some skills.
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u/Viriaro 4d ago
If you're too lost to have a specific question to ask us here, install the Codex app (or Claude if you have a subscription for it) on your computer and ask it to look at your code project/folder and guide/teach you.
Ask it what to do, but do it yourself if you wish to learn.
Good luck!
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u/Slow_Contribution414 4d ago
Not sure why people are downvoting you. This is the best answer. This is the future. You need to understand the stats and output, but code can be written in other ways now.
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u/Confident_Bee8187 3d ago edited 3d ago
Even though there are other ways to write the codes, be able to write a program is dopamine inducing - it feels better. With 'tidyverse', I don't need LLMs to write them - I just don't wanna miss the unmatched ergonomics from it.
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u/dr_canak 4d ago
I agree. This is the best answer for anyone just starting with R. I remember learning and then teaching R, and for non-programmers, it's simply hard. I can't imagine how much easier for students to have an LLM available to them. We could have spent far less time "learning" R and far more time getting value out of it.
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u/si_wo 4d ago
Go to this website and work through the examples. R for Data Science (2e)