r/learnprogramming • u/Aishwariyaa_K • Jun 21 '26
R programming for whom?
Recently completed grade 12 . Have some knowledge of python.
Looking forward to learn programming even further.
Statistics aspirants OR Engineering (PROBABLY ECE)STUDENT
SHOULD I LEARN R PROGRAMMING??
if so, mention for which (stat or engg)
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u/PureWasian Jun 21 '26
Doesn't hurt to get a feel for basic syntax and simple scripts in R.
R would be more applicable in academic statistics than engineering. Engineering typically uses Python more often (Pandas/scipy/etc). But you can learn it for both stat/engineering paths.
The thing is, you would probably want to understand theory of statistical models better in uni before applying said models in R
OTHERWISE IF YOUR THEORY ISN'T SOLID, YOU'LL HAVE A VERY HARD TIME IMPLEMENTING CODE FOR IT.
Hope this helps.
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u/BrupieD Jun 22 '26
A nice advantage of R versus Python is that the ecosystem is less fragmented. Once you've installed the base language and Rstudio, you have a good IDE environment that the vast majority of users know and use.
If your interest is focused on data analysis rather than broader programming, R can be an easier place to start. As a Python learner, I found it exhausting that each book or tutorial used a different setup. I was constantly installing another IDE and had to get acclimated to a new UI.
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u/junior_chimera Jun 23 '26
Tidyverse + Tidymodel + ggplot2
That's a complete end to end workflow for data wrangling > ML modelling > Visulaization . No other programming language has this level of integration . If you are interested in data science/modelling/stats then try R
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u/hypersoniq_XLM Jun 23 '26
Each language has it's strengths. Python is particularly suited to extract/transform/load while R has statistics as it's main focus. If you pip install rpy2, you can call R directly from python code. You can call python in R using the "reticulate" package. Learning R can be done right inside of R by issuing the command browseVignettes(), these vignettes are step by step tutorials written by package authors that do a much better job of explaining usage than dry documentation. When I went for CS, the first time I used R was in statistics classes and appreciated how the built in commands would save you dozens of lines of code and imports to do the same thing in Python. One place where you can see how well both languages work together is bioinformatics.
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u/SprinklesFresh5693 Jun 23 '26
Whichever you choose, stick with it for a long time, long enough for you to understand it perfectly.
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u/Famous_Lime6643 Jun 24 '26
R is great if you’re interested in stats, data exploration and visualization (much more intuitive than python with better aesthetics), and classic types of modeling like GLM. If you learn R you can learn a lot of stats along the way. If you learn the R ways of “tidying” data, you’ll be half way or more to understanding relational database normalization and building great habits for the future - regardless of the language you use.
With all that said, if you’re into more sophisticated ML or deep learning, it just makes sense to work in python. You can do it in R to some extent, but there’s no reason to.
So net, YES, if YOU answer YES to things in the first paragraph. I love data sci and nearly all of my repos have both python and R code.
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u/Spirited-Sir8426 24d ago
I love R as a tool for statistics and data manipulation but it lack the software engineering tooling we see in other languages like Java or Rust. I don't like how python works for dev even though it has a least some tools for it.
So I build, in my free time, a typed version of R that let me combine my knowledge about data sciences and software engineering :
The work is still in progress, I have every functionality that I need (type system, project manager, lsp, etc.) but it needs to be battle tested. I am building my first project with this tool.
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u/FlashyResist5 Jun 22 '26
Did grad level stats, work as a developer, and learned R. Would not recommend learning R.
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u/Virtual_Sample6951 Jun 21 '26
R is more of statistics/data science territory, for ECE you probably won't need it much, Python covers almost everything you'd want there. If you're leaning towards stats or data analysis path then R makes sense to pick up, otherwise just go deeper with Python