That's good coding practice. But it doesn't help me when I have forgotten where I have used a particular structure or syntax. Since I am not building websites, but rather analyzing data, there is no predictable flow to the code.
Data processing tricks in my repertory need to change with every new data manipulation I want to do and I can't remember what tools I used for each single variable very well. I have found that I learn the most when I take the time to consciously analyse if my mind has absorbed the concepts by writing it down.
I considered using (e:strip) as my code notebook because I wanted to keep everything together. But it does not handle code well. Back and forward slashes produce wonky results. Characters don't escape well even with the code box. The code box itself is a fixed size. I always work in big wide screens and don't see it changing so I also wanted my notebook to have a very generous text area and very little of anything else.
All of these criteria are met by:
I still wish I could do that on (e:strip) though. As my life gets to be more about how to successfully survive in academia, I can distinctly see how that blog will get more entries per week than this one in the near and distant future if I stay on course. But of course, I don't see how I can I wax eloquent over trivia, veggies, food and the side effects of medication in between R, LaTeX and Perl, so maybe that blog does need to be separate.
Its gone now. (e:strip) is my notebook from now on and google docs. I didn't like Tumblr so much anyway. their search never worked. Sour grapes.
I can't remember back that far.
Its more challenging because I have ZERO coding background and have taken no real "programming" classes. I have no concept of what programming involves or even any of the conventions. It's like learning an alien language with no concept about grammar or even semantics. I had SAS classes in before, but SAS is pretty lame in that its not very flexible and encourages code copying without thought.
For now, this is all about how to get familiar and remember how I am doing and learning the code... For example, can you remember how you learned things when you were first starting out before you wrote all the extensive code?
I guess this is my first really extensive interaction with the language so what you suggest might be possible say, next year or with more experience with more datasets.
% you need to work on making it more generic
Yes, I think that is the concept of writing functions in R. The thing is I can only make it as generic as my data structure allows me to. Every dataset is different because they come from differently designed questionnaires. In traditional epidemiology, there are a million and one questionnaires that ask for information in a trillion different ways. Making one generic breaks the other. That is why there are more generic functions for genetics and bioinformatics than for epi. The data is more globally similar in terms of structure and context. It sometimes makes me mad about how subjective data collection in epi can be... Cleaning it all up is a nightmare.
Looking at your blog that is the kind of thing that should be on an R site. Thats why I love the online PHP manual :::link::: Its community driven.
What I meant by "in the code" is building libraries with documented code that does stuff. For example, if you write a really great routine for processing information, you need to work on making it more generic so that it will work in more place instead of just solving one problem. I mean that is not always possible but that is the essence of building a code library.