topic What is "General SAS Programming" community for? in All Things Community

What is "General SAS Programming" community for?

Rick_SAS — Tue, 19 Jan 2016 13:05:09 GMT

Can someone please explain the purpose of the "General SAS Programming" Community? How does it differ from "Base SAS Programming," whose description is "DATA Step, Macro, Functions and more," which seems to cover what most people would classify as "SAS Programming." Can you provide an example of a question that would be appropriate for the "General SAS Programming" Community, but would not fit into another existing community?

Re: What is "General SAS Programming" community for?

RW9 — Tue, 19 Jan 2016 13:36:26 GMT

TBH I don't know myself. I would guess that General is for more theoretical programming, such as comparisons between techniques, possibly including third party content - DDE maybe, VBA, etc. Whereas Base would be fixed on the language, syntax and such like. Just guessing though.

Re: What is "General SAS Programming" community for?

Rick_SAS — Tue, 19 Jan 2016 13:45:31 GMT

I like your guess: VB, PowerShell, DDE and other techniques for driving SAS programmatically. (?) Perhaps the Community administrators could clarify and create a subtitle for the community that better describes its purpose.

Re: What is "General SAS Programming" community for?

ChrisHemedinger — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 01:17:31 GMT

I also like your thinking on this -- but I'll have to be honest here. "General" is a catch all for programming questions that were landing in the wrong spots -- places where programmer-people weren't looking.

Now it catches a lot of threads, but what I'd really like to do is combine some of our SAS programming boards -- maybe combine "General" with "Base" and "DATA step" since so many of the threads really cut across these topics. Where one decides to post can be arbitrary. The audience and experts for these subtly different topics tend to be the same people.

We'd love to hear your feedback on that though. We promise to not make any sudden moves...

Re: What is "General SAS Programming" community for?

Rick_SAS — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 14:40:25 GMT

My feedback is that the administrators should write a clear description of the purpose of every community. I don't care whether you decide that "General Programming" should be marked as "Interfacing with SAS through other scripting and programming languages" or whether it is designated as "A grab-bag community. Don't know where to post? Post here!"

Due to time constraints, I only follow a small number of communities that are relevant to my interests. Poorly defined communities do not serve anyone well. A community that is clearly named and described will better serve those with questions and those who want to answer.