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Go R, Young Man
theodp (442580) writes " Learning to code has become a mainstream fascination," writes Brian Liou in Why are YOU learning to code?, "but all the evangelization has been misleading. The problem in our Chris-Bosh-codes-so-should-you society is that people learn to code without first asking "for what purpose do you want to use code?" What in your day-to-day work could you actually automate using code? Let's face it, your odds of creating the next hot iPhone app aren't great, but the spreadsheets you look at everyday or the strategic business decisions you or your company makes? Coding can help you with those. Coding to better understand data would help everyone." Leada co-founder Liou's advice? "So to all non-technical professionals looking to get technical: If you want to become a software engineer, by all means learn Ruby or go through the JavaScript tutorials on Codecademy. But if you're simply a business professional looking to gain an edge on your peers, trust me, you are much better off learning R." So, did Mark Zuckerberg steer 100 million K-12 coder wannabes down the wrong path with the JavaScript and Ruby preaching?"
What does 'you don't learn to program in a vacuum' have to do with the statement 'you have to choose a programming language to learn with'?
I learned QBASIC, then C, then Java, then Python, and only by the fourth stage did I consider that I'd learned anything close to 'how to program'. Had I started with R I'd probably be 10 steps behind where I am now.
OTOH I do believe R is a lot more practical than many languages people use and it does seem to be doable by those who cannot otherwise program. So the article probably has a point. If you want to get better at math and leverage computers for decision making, but can't be arsed to really get into how computers work, R is probably a good thing to check out. But if you like the ideas and capabilities it opens up - FFS, learn more languages.
Otherwise, I'm not sure it's a great choice. For the typical business person who's interested in coding you might as well start with VBA in Excel or Google Apps Script if you've moved away from MS Office to Google's business apps. Google Apps Script is javascript based so you have the advantage of learning something that has other applications.
R is very good at manipulating and plotting data but the charts produced aren't always of the highest quality. They're fine for internal use. There are lots of packages to extend the usefulness of the language but at its heart and soul it's about numbers and plots. It's not really a general purpose language. Just keep that in mind.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that learning Visual Basic and 'programming' in Excel will actually give you an edge on your business professional peers.
Last time I checked, Excel was the hammer of choice for most businesses (maybe combined with SPSS), not R (I'm not sure if any business even uses it).
Ironically, if you focus on Google Spreadsheets, learning Javascript (and the Google APIs) is what is required if you want to do more advanced stuff.
C++ has problems and weaknesses. Java has problems and weaknesses. C# has problems and weaknesses. Python has problems and weaknesses.
JavaScript doesn't have problems and weaknesses, it's a disaster from beginning to end.