R for Data Science, 2nd Edition

Part V. Program

In this part of the book, you’ll improve your programming skills. Programming is a cross-cutting skill needed for all data science work: you must use a computer to do data science; you cannot do it in your head or with pencil and paper.

Figure V-1. Programming is the water in which all the other components swim.

Programming produces code, and code is a tool of communication. Obviously code tells the computer what you want it to do. But it also communicates meaning to other humans. Thinking about code as a vehicle for communication is important because every project you do is fundamentally collaborative. Even if you’re not working with other people, you’ll definitely be working with future-you! Writing clear code is important so that others (like future-you) can understand why you tackled an analysis in the way you did. That means getting better at programming also involves getting better at communicating. Over time, you want your code to become not just easier to write but easier for others to read.

In the following three chapters, you’ll learn skills to improve your programming skills:

• Copy and paste is a powerful tool, but you should avoid doing it more than twice. Repeating yourself in code is dangerous because it can easily lead to errors and inconsistencies. Instead, in Chapter 25, you’ll learn how to write functions, which let you extract repeated tidyverse ...