Great question! Without knowing what class you're working on it is hard to provide a definitive answer. SAS analysts have to learn to write code or understand code well enough to change it. All of our "task" oriented tools like SAS Enterprise Guide or SAS Studio are designed to provide many of the functions of the underlying SAS procedures. However, the tasks were never intended to provide all of the flexibility and functionality that is available when writing code. Past a beginning level, if a course shows the use of code for a particular set of procedures or types of analysis, the course is designed that way because the instructors and course developers determined that the course objectives could not be met by only using tasks. For example, if you were looking at the Statistics 2 class or the Predictive Modeling using Logistic Regression class, those classes typically teach most of the topics using the level of SAS programming skills that we teach in SAS Programming 1 and SAS Programming 2. This means that the student will have a good understanding of the LIBNAME statement, writing simple programs for data manipulation, importing data, having a basic understanding of PROC SQL and a basic understanding of using SAS Macro variables. On the other hand, if you are taking the Applied Analytics using SAS Enterprise Miner course, that class uses the concept of nodes that each perform a task (but not quite in the same way as Enterprise Guide or Enterprise Miner). And, even in Enterprise Miner classes, we show how to insert and change code because it is not always possible to accomplish all the needed changes for analysis using point and click methods.
If you want more specific advice about training available or a sequence of courses for your chosen topic, you can email curriculumconsulting@sas.com and our instructors will help with course recommendations and content questions.
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