topic Re: Absolute Beginner Recommendations? in New SAS User

Absolute Beginner Recommendations?

BennettTristan — Tue, 07 Jan 2020 12:00:54 GMT

Hi! I'm an absolute beginner (I have literally no experience coding or data entry/sorting) but I am really interested in self-teaching myself SAS and eventually getting base certified. I was wondering if anyone could give some recommendations for online courses, books, or other resources for helping me accomplish this goal and getting started as a beginner! I was looking at some like Udemy or Coursera but I'm not sure if either of those platforms tailor to absolute beginners. I also definitely feel like I need something that is really self-paced as I'm also a college student who has a pretty varied amount of free time based on exam schedules and such.

Thanks in advance

Re: Absolute Beginner Recommendations?

Kurt_Bremser — Tue, 07 Jan 2020 12:14:05 GMT

Unless your university provides a SAS environment, get SAS University Edition.

Work through the Programming 1 course (https://www.sas.com/de_at/learn/academic-programs/resources/free-sas-e-learning.html).

If you want to spend a little money, get The Little SAS Book.

Re: Absolute Beginner Recommendations?

LaureeS — Tue, 07 Jan 2020 14:46:00 GMT

Hello! SAS has a lot of resources to help beginner programmers. You can go to https://www.sas.com/en_us/learn.html for training resources (including Programming 1, which is free!). For books, check out Getting Started books on the SAS bookstore. Kurt's recommendation of the new Little SAS Book is excellent, but you might do well with Learning SAS by Example too - it starts from the very beginning and has exercises at the end of each chapter to test your skills and you can work through it at your own pace. All of the books on our store have downloadable Table of Contents and extracts so you can see if they meet your needs before to buy them.

Absolute Beginner Recommendations?

MarcoCole — Wed, 08 Jan 2020 15:07:02 GMT

Thanks in advance for any help or advice anyone can give me!

Re: Absolute Beginner Recommendations?

ed_sas_member — Wed, 08 Jan 2020 15:14:39 GMT

Hi @MarcoCole

Welcome to the community!

You can start with the e-learning SAS Programming 1: Essentials https://support.sas.com/edu/schedules.html?ctry=us&crs=PROG1

which will give you very good foundations.

You can also learn a lot from the book SAS Certified Specialist Prep Guide: Base Programming Using SAS 9.4

Re: Absolute Beginner Recommendations?

PeterClemmensen — Wed, 08 Jan 2020 15:14:50 GMT

@MarcoCole Hi and welcome to the SAS Community 🙂

For an absolute beginner, I usually recommend the Free Online Programming 1 Course.

Re: Absolute Beginner Recommendations?

Kurt_Bremser — Wed, 08 Jan 2020 15:27:27 GMT

Please do not multi-post under different user names.