Find your way in the R world
Maëlle Salmon 🏠 https://masalmon.eu 🐦 ma_salmon
Licence CC-BY-SA
👋 Hello from Nancy !
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My R journey
BSc in biology, first steps in R, ⚡ really liked R Graph Gallery!
MSc ecology, MPH. Many scripts.
PhD in statistics. Contributions to a package! SVN, R-Forge, manually created Rd, Sweave.
Statistician and data manager. Use of devtools, tidyverse, R Markdown, git, GitHub.
At the same time as discovering devtools &co : Twitter, R blog, package submission to rOpenSci, co-founded R-Ladies Barcelona.
Recent projects
Research software engineer for rOpenSci, e.g. maintaining the package dev guide. 🔧 rOpenSci at useR! https://ropensci.org/blog/2021/07/02/ropensci-user2021/
Some work on the next version of pkgdown. ✨
Online book “HTTP testing in R” with Scott Chamberlain. 📖
Course “Scientific Rmd blogging”. 📝
Volunteering in the R community
Main manager of the Twitter account of R-Ladies Global. 🐦
Editor for rOpenSci Software Peer Review. 📦
Various talks sharing tips & tricks. 😉
Slidedeck online 😁
Two categories of tips today!
Why & how to follow R news.
How & where to get help with R.
Why follow R news ?
Improve your current work. Example : rex !
Solve your future problems. Example : knowing reticulate exists.
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How does following news help ?
Learn about tools,
Learn about organizations and people.
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Infinite information flows
Twitter #rstats hashtag, Twitter timeline.
GitHub timeline.
Hard to optimize.
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Infinite information flows
😌 Don’t be a completist.
✂️ Mute; optimize with Tweetdeck (even regular expressions!) and RefinedGitHub ?
✨ Follow accounts useful for you.
📖 Read Twitter for R programmers.
🤷 And if it doesn’t suit you, don’t use them! Maybe just a Twitter account indicating your homepage?
News aggregators
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Your collection ?
RSS feeds of your favorite blogs! Included blogs of tools you use.
Conferences
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satRdays
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useR! 😉 🎉
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etc.
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R Conferences
Yesterday @asmae_toumi introduced us to {r2d3map} for making web-ready maps...🙌🙌🙌. I can't wait to indulge in it. My people, please attend meetups and conferences...there's always something new to learn. https://t.co/RBMyRjgboO
— Shel 🇰🇪 (@Shel_Kariuki) July 3, 2021
R Conferences
Attend or…
Use online materials (many things these days 😬);
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Read schedules;
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Read slidedecks;
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Watch recordings.
R Conferences, when, where ?
R Weekly conferences section 🚀
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Why not read books?
Big Book of R, collection of links to R books, many of them available for free online!
Pick recent ones.
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Why not read books?
Last super useful R book I read : R Markdown Cookbook by Yihui Xie, Christophe Dervieux, Emily Riederer.
Discuss
With your colleagues and R friends.
At conferences. 😁
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No news overdose
Keeping up-to-date is not following everything live!
No need to read everything.
Every piece of code written in a given language or framework is a step away from any other language, and five more minutes you’ll have to spend migrating it to something else. That’s fine. You just have to decide what you’re willing to be locked into.
Quote by Vicki Boykis “Commit to your lock-in”. Get to work, with your maybe imperfect tools.
What to do with information?
Evaluate it!
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Like all information. 😁
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Ask your R friends for opinion.
For packages there are useful criteria.
Evaluation criteria for packages.
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Active development ?
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Well tested ?
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Well documented ?
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Popular ?
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Developed by someone / an organization you already trust ?
Guidance for package development
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Solving your problems
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My typology of R questions
Problem! Bug! Error!
Question/debate (is there an R tool for foo? How do I learn bar? ggplot2 or base plots?)
First, how to solve your problems.
Asking for help?
After reasonable efforts.
🔍 Re-read the docs ;
🔍 Use a search engine ;
🔍 Experimenting.
Note
Turn it off and on again !
This and other excellent advice in a talk by Jenny Bryan “Object of type ‘closure’ is not subsettable”.
Don’t only turn off your computer!
I love waking up and jumping back into solving a bug and immediately solving it with a fresh mind. Sleep is my favorite coding tool.
— Kelly Vaughn 🐞 (@kvlly) April 23, 2021
Small bingo
Debugging can be frustrating for our first time #RStats students... but maybe it can lead to a spot on Debugging Bingo! DeBug-o? DeBingo?
— Dr. Ji Son (@cogscimom) January 27, 2021
Here's a copy if you want to include the common errors you see in your class!https://t.co/mI3g2QfvR2 pic.twitter.com/kyOCO3jjzL
Search engine
According to http://datacarpentry.org/semester-biology/materials/googling-for-help/
- Choose words well (Ah ! So easy…)
- Not too many words
- Specify R
Evaluate credibility of results (site, authors, date, scores, etc.)
Get to know reprex
Goal: from a bug in a script to the tiniest example possible.
reprex by Jenny Bryan & its docs
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A concept, reprex for “reproducible example.”
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An excellent package for running code in a isolated playground & communicating it.
Why reprex ?
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The isolated bug is easier to solve or will be solved by creating it !
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You can send your bug in a format ideal for experts !
How does reprex work
- You write some code somewhere (including loading libraries, creating toy data etc.).
- You copy the code to your clipboard.
- You run
reprex::reprex()
- You get the rendered code on the clipboard (and a preview in RStudio Viewer pane)! Error messages rendered, images uploaded to imgur.
- You paste the rendered code somewhere to show to someone.
More info on reprex &co
More debugging resources
💣 “debugging” in Advanced R de Hadley Wickham
💣 Webinar “Debugging techniques in RStudio” by Amanda Gadrow
And if it still does not work?
Give up 😭 or ask for help !
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Where to ask for help?
The ideal place depends on:
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your confidence level;
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your question.
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Safest places
Your colleagues and friends. But also…
Public Q&A places 1/2
Twitter #rstats. Short questions or links to longer questions.
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Publics Q&A places 2/2
Packages. Where to report a bug? Look in docs and search engine.
Stack Overflow. Bugs and short questions.
Mailing lists https://www.r-project.org/mail.html
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Where to ask for help?
You might have to ask in several places (one after the other).
More resources:
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Conclusion
Thanks !
To Batool Almarzouq and all useR! organizers, and to y’all for listening!
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Progress, not pressure
Regular learning, slow but steady usage of reprex…
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Help others
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Developers, write good docs & changelogs.
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Share new-to-you useful information!
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Answer others’ questions. It helps you too!
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🔗 https://r-way.netlify.app/
To find your way in the R world…
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Follow R news as you prefer,
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Learn to solve your problems and to ask for help.
Find your community. ✨
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