Recommended Resources for Learning Coding (R language)

I’m often asked for recommendations for learning to program. Below are the resources I found most helpful when learning R at the start of my PhD (~2016), ordered from beginner → advanced.

• swirlstats.com Great for complete beginners to start here with swirl. Shows you how to install Rstudio, then runs through interactive exercises.
• ‘The Art of R Programming’ by Matoff The single most helpful textbook for building strong fundamentals.
• Johns Hopkins Data Science Specialization, Coursera Helpful if you prefer structured video lectures and exercises. Course 2 is a good entry point.
• ‘R for Data Science’ by Hadley Wickham et al Excellent introduction to tidy data workflows (the tidyverse) and the grammar of graphics (ggplot2), written by the lead developer.
• ‘Advanced R’ by Hadley Wickham A deep dive into R under the hood. If you make it to here you are doing v well indeed.
• ‘The R Inferno’ by Patrick Burns A sharply written guide to the finer points of optimizing your R code.