Hello all,
Disclaimer: I know that there are very talented programmers here who have more years of experience in SAS than I do years of formal education, but please excuse my questions if they seem rudimentary.
My main questions are:
1j What kind of tips are there for being an efficient programmer (i.e. good habits)?
2) Other than the obvious of just practicing, how do I get better?
2a) Are there good training websites (like Udemy, Coursera) or books that you would recommend?
3) Is there a knowledge of a specific key concept, proc or data step manipulation that really unlocked the way you program that i should focus on to be more efficient? (i.e.- do loops, arrays, hash tables, etc)
I recently graduated a year ago and got a job as a statistician for a CRO. I notice that I do a lot of SAS programming (like 99 percent of my job) and I want to get better at doing TFLs (Table, listings, Figures). Mainly i want to get better at doing Tables and Listings.
For the most part, I really like my job and enjoy the gratification i get from solving complex puzzles that require unique solutions for getting tables/listings to look like the mock. But I feel that I'm slow, and my code is a little bit longer than it should be. I also get frustrated easily because I feel like there is a lot that I don't know how to do that would make my life easier, but because of a lack of a mentor or someone to guide me on being a better programmer, I'm not able to fill out my knowledge gaps more quickly. I'm interested in hearing how others improved, and how I can take my programming skill to the next level.
Some answers:
3) you need to get really good at the skills you are using repeatedly; you mention "tables and listings", but is that PROC REPORT or PROC SQL or PROC PRINT or something else? Pick one of these, and any other skills you use repeatedly, and learn these skills in depth. No one knows everything, but you can make yourself stand out if you master a couple of regularly used skills
If you're in Pharma, I would also browse PharmaSUG papers (as well as papers from other conferences).
https://www.lexjansen.com/pharmasug/
When I was early career, in addition to online communities, and official training classes from SAS, I found attending user group conferences very helpful, and motivating. I'm not early career any more, and I still find attending user group conferences very helpful, and motivating.
Also, don't forget about SAS books by users, e.g. https://support.sas.com/en/books.html.
Overall, the best way to improve your SAS programming skills is to practice regularly, seek out opportunities to learn from others, and stay up to date with the latest developments in the field. With time and effort, you will be able to develop the skills and expertise you need to become a more efficient and effective SAS programmer.
@webart999ARM wrote:
- Join online forums or user groups where you can ask questions, share your work, and get feedback from other SAS programmers. This will help you learn from others, as well as connect with like-minded individuals who can provide support and guidance.
Thanks for your reply. Besides this community, is there another forum/discord/website I can join that I can talk about SAS with other programmers? As far as I'm aware, it's only here and reddit.
@Hello_there wrote:
@webart999ARM wrote:
- Join online forums or user groups where you can ask questions, share your work, and get feedback from other SAS programmers. This will help you learn from others, as well as connect with like-minded individuals who can provide support and guidance.
Thanks for your reply. Besides this community, is there another forum/discord/website I can join that I can talk about SAS with other programmers? As far as I'm aware, it's only here and reddit.
Interesting, I had never looked for SAS stuff on reddit.
There is an ancient listserve, SAS-L, that is still active, but not nearly as active as here. https://listserv.uga.edu/scripts/wa-UGA.exe?A0=SAS-L
Plenty of SAS questions on stack overflow, but I don't think of that as community.
There's a fun SAS quiz site, which has some social features: https://sasensei.com/ . If you write questions, people will review and comment.
I've heard there are SAS groups on FB, but I haven't been in them.
There are some SAS groups on LinkedIn, but when I tried them they were heavily recruiter noise, and linked in isn't really great for sharing code etc.
But honestly, I would say this is the best community site, especially as there is lots of involvement from both SAS users and SAS employees. If you hang out here, and ask questions, and try answering questions, you'll learn a lot.
Look forward to hearing thoughts from others on online SAS community forums.
Hi @Hello_there,
Regarding efficiency:
Regarding key concepts and books:
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Learn how use the CAT functions in SAS to join values from multiple variables into a single value.
Find more tutorials on the SAS Users YouTube channel.