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What does an R programmer do?

An R programmer is a software developer, statistician, data scientist, or financial analyst who specializes in using the R programming language to develop software solutions and services for clients. The programming language R is particularly popular among statisticians and data miners. While R was first released in 1993, it has become much more popular in recent years due to the rise of big data and the need to apply statistical models to large data sets efficiently.

R programmers are often multidisciplinary and familiar with using and developing statistical tools and models to apply to large data sets. Thus, an R programmer may be primarily a software developer or primarily a statistician. There is significant overlap between the two, as R is also particularly popular with researchers, academics, and those specializing in machine learning and algorithms.

What skills do I need to become an R programmer?

R programmers must be familiar with general programming principles and best practices, as well as those specific to the R programming language. Understanding how to use the R programming language to translate statistical models into workable code is a vital skill for R programmers. Fluency in scripting languages such as Python is critical also critical. Because R provides graphical facilities for data analysis and display, R programmers should also be familiar with data analytics and taking the results of statistical models and charting them in various ways to achieve project objectives.

How do I learn R?

R is a niche programming language that is most often used for very specific projects and use cases. Few programmers learn R as their first programming language, though any developer looking to learn R who is also comfortable with statistical modeling concepts should be able to learn R fairly quickly.

R is written in C and Fortran and somewhat resembles those languages, though the syntax is more similar to that of Lisp. R is a modern implementation of the S statistical programming language, so any developer familiar with S should be able to pick up R quickly.

R programmers should be aware of the range of third-party software libraries and frameworks available for R. Since R itself is open source, so are many of the packages and libraries developed for it. Knowing which libraries are available and how to harness them to their full potential will enable R programmers to develop software solutions more quickly and efficiently.

What are some examples of typical projects for R programmers?

R language is commonly used in all sorts of fields dealing with statistics and modeling. This is not limited to research and academia; R is also popular in the field of finance. Many R programmers who work in finance are not dedicated developers but instead are investors and financial analysts who leverage R to build tools and crunch numbers as part of their job.

As R is specialized for both statistics and graphing, it makes an excellent tool for financial analysts to develop charts and figures for all sorts of financial use cases. R has many frameworks and libraries available for working with financial data, making it easy to obtain stock information and use it to create custom graphs and charts. The data visualization tools and focus on graphical graphing embedded into the R programming language enable the creation of rich and expressive charts, diagrams, and models for all sorts of financial and statistical data.

Should I get an R programmer certification?

In addition to developing your skills, obtaining a professional certification can help your Upwork profile stand out. Few industry-wide certifications are dedicated to the R programming language, though there are some courses available that specifically use R as part of a wider data science certification. Examples of these types of certifications include:

• R Programming Certification from Johns Hopkins University
• Data Science: R Basics Certificate from Harvard University
• Statistics with R Certification from Duke University

Most of these courses tend to have statistics or data science as the major focus and simply teach R as a means to achieve those learning goals. However, the certifications demonstrate programming competency and familiarity with the R programming language.

An alternate approach for budding R programmers without formal certifications is to build up a portfolio of projects that use R. Hosting these somewhere that the code is freely available to browse, such as GitHub, allows potential clients to view your work and see how well you can use R to build particular tools and services.

Depending on the specifics of the individual project, a client may rank either academic qualifications related to finance and statistics or R programming competency higher.