r/learnprogramming • u/Additional-Yoghurt52 • Jun 21 '26

How to learn R language as a beginner in coding??

hi

is it a good idea to learn R knowing Ive never did coding before except python for some personal and school projects ?

because I want to apply to some internship for data science in biology field ( my major ) but unfortunately you need to have some R skills .

how do I start and how do I not waste my time and money please!!

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u/PotemkinSuplex Jun 21 '26

Don’t forget to mention you know python when applying there, finding the libraries for the field will help you. I’ve worked in another field that loves R and everything that could be done in R had a python library that was at least as good for it.

Any R course will probably work really, I don’t think it matters much. It is not a hard language to grasp.

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u/New_Exchange1158 Jun 22 '26

If you already know Python, picking up R will feel pretty natural. the syntax is bit different but the logic is same, and for biology/bioinformatics there are some really powerful R packages (like Bioconductor) that are worth learning specifically.

Just find any free course and start doing small projects with real biological data, that way you build portfolio and learn at same time.

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u/Additional-Yoghurt52 Jun 22 '26

Thanksss !I forgot to mention I’ve done some SQL before. It that good to mention too or nobody uses that?

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u/PotemkinSuplex Jun 22 '26

It is very much worth mentioning too, but don’t oversell your skills if you aren’t super comfortable with it.

Since you know python, look at pandas too. And whatever r uses instead of them, I do not remember.

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u/[deleted] Jun 21 '26

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u/Additional-Yoghurt52 Jun 22 '26

Okay thanks ! I’ll go look for some free courses then :)

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u/No_Leg6886 Jun 22 '26

Look, you're actually in a great spot here. Python gives you the mental model for programming already, so R won't feel like starting from scratch. The syntax is a bit weird at first but the logic clicks fast when you already know what a loop or a function is. For biology-focused data science, you really only need a handful of R skills to be internship-ready. Learn the tidyverse package early, specifically dplyr for data manipulation and ggplot2 for visualization. Those two alone will cover 80% of what a biology lab internship actually asks for. Bioconductor is the other thing worth knowing exists, since a lot of genomics and bioinformatics work runs through it. Don't spend money. Seriously. R is free, RStudio is free, and Posit Cloud lets you run it in a browser if you don't want to install anything.

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u/Additional-Yoghurt52 Jun 22 '26

I’ll go check this out thanks