Programming 1/2 content: removed INFILE and added macro vars?

[ChrisNZ]

@Kurt_Bremser if you want to create more than a "button-pushing monkey"...

I think that ambition disappeared the day SAS decided that EG was no longer an end-user tool, but was a developer tool (it is not), and decided to replace SAS Desktop with EG by leveraging the price difference.

[jsattler]

Hello from Manila,

The idea that INFILE is archaic and should be deleted from our programming classes can only be held by people who aren't tuned into contemporary IT and don't know about SAS and Hadoop. One of the basic ways for SAS to access Hadoop is with a FILENAME statement. Here's a code snippet from very recent SAS documentation on the subject:

filename foo hadoop '/user/xxxx/acctdata.dat' cfg=cfg user='xxxx'
    pass='xxxx' debug recfm=s lrecl=65536 bufferlen=65536;
  
data _null_;
   infile foo truncover;
   input a $1024.;
   put a;
run;

What this means is that INFILE not only should be mentioned in programming courses, but that its contemporary usefulness should be made clear to students.

Best wishes,

Jim

[jsattler]

Hi Stacey,

I'm sure you remember "Sully" Sullenberger, who flew his plane successfully nonstop from LaGuardia to the Hudson River in NY.  He had some comments a couple of days ago about the Boeing 737 MAX 8 disaster, pointing mainly to the lack of training by the crew on the flight deck. Modern aircraft have become more and more automated. Some people say this helps sell the planes to companies and countries claiming their personnel need less expertise to fly them. It strikes me that there's a parallel with our work in data processing, where it's sometimes argued that expert programmers aren't really needed to fly the software. (Note-Sullenberger also made comments about bad design, slow upgrades and poor documentation. I'm sure life provides many more examples of these problems in different kinds of work.)

Bottom line: Training is important.  Programming expertise is golden. People have jobs to do and need to be able to do them. What differentiates SAS programmers from others is that when someone asks them if they can do XYZ, they answer "YES." It's nice to be successful. And it's always been the success of SAS programmers that has propelled SAS into orbit.

You've gathered a lot of inputs from people about the content of our programming courses and I don't want to add more. Instead, I'd like to mention a few things I've observed in the years I've been teaching SAS.

First, the programming course material is static. With the exception of what's happening right now, the material has been frozen for years. We see that kind of thing in academe, when professors use the same lecture notes that were written many years ago. Not good. What's more, the frozen material occasionally contains errors. What comes to mind is the slide about mailing labels, in which the address label was attached to the back of an envelope!

SAS sits on top of powerful publishing software. Why can't the courses be updated or corrected more frequently? We have "hot fixes" for the software, but nothing similar happens in our education world. Why did it take so long to put the label on the front of the envelope?

Second, many of my students really like the chapter review quizzes. But they're not available as handouts. Even though the questions might not be repeated on certification exams, they still help students understand the level of knowledge expected of them and the flavor of test questions. Let's give our students handouts, and while we're at it, let's have continuous improvement in the questions themselves.

Third, here's what I tell students about Base SAS. I call it the "SAS supermarket."  It contains all the ingredients needed for cooking. The shopping aisles are always adding new spices, types of pasta, yoghurt flavors and so much more. Students need to walk around and look at what's there and what's new.  Our new data "scientists" don't deserve to be called that unless they can do research. We ought to teach them how to do it.

Best wishes,

Jim

[Kurt_Bremser]

Maxim 1 should be a major part of the introduction to SAS programming. As soon as a student is confident in making use of documentation.sas.com, all problems become shallow. Mostly 😉