IEEE Spectrum has published its fourth annual ranking of of top programming languages, and the R language is again featured in the Top 10. This year R ranks at #6, down a spot from its 2016 ranking (and with an IEEE score — derived from search, social media, and job listing trends — tied with the #5 place-getter, C#). Python has taken the #1 slot from C, jumping from its #3 ranking in 2016.
For R (a domain specific language for data science) to rank in the top 10, and for Python (a general-purpose language with many data science applications) to take the top spot, may seem like a surprise. I attribute this to continued broad demand for machine intelligence application development, driven by the growth of "big data" initiatives and the strategic imperative to capitalize on these data stores by companies wordwide. Other data-oriented languages appear in the Top 50 rankings, including Matlab (#15), SQL (#23), Julia (#31) and SAS (#37).
For the complete announcement of the 2017 IEEE Spectrum rankings, including additional commentary and analysis of changes, follow the link below.
IEEE Spectrum: The 2017 Top Programming Languages
Rafael Irizarry from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has presented a number of courses on R and Biostatistics on EdX, and he recently also provided an index of all of the course modules as YouTube videos with supplemental materials. The EdX courses are linked below, which you can take for free, or simply follow the series of YouTube videos and materials provided in the index.
Data Analysis for the Life Sciences Series
A companion book and associated R Markdown documents are also available for download.
Genomics Data Analysis Series
For links to all of the course components, including videos and supplementary materials, follow the link below.
rafalab: HarvardX Biomedical Data Science Open Online Training
The annual useR!2017 conference took place July 4-7 in Brussels, and in every dimension it was the best yet. It was the largest (with over 1,100 R users from around the world in attendance), and yet still very smoothly run with many amazing talks and lots of fun for everyone. If you weren't able to make it to Brussels, take a look at these recaps from Nick Strayer & Lucy D'Agostino McGowan, Once Upon Data and DataCamp to get a sense of what it was like, or simply take a look at this recap video:
From my personal point of view, if I were to try and capture user!2017 in just one word, it would be: vibrant. With so many first-time attendees, an atmosphere of excitement was everywhere, and the conference was noticeably much more diverse than in prior years — a really positive development. Kudos to the organizers for their focus on making useR!2017 a welcoming and inclusive conference, and a special shout-out to the R-Ladies community for encouraging and inspiring so many. I especially enjoyed meeting the diversity scholars and being a part of the special beginner's session held before the conference officially began (and so sadly unrecorded). Judging from the 200+ attendees reactions there, many welcomed getting a jump-start on the R project, its community, and how best to participate and contribute.
The diversity was reflected in the content, too, with a great mix of tutorials, keynotes and talks on R packages, R applications, the R community and ecosystem, and the R project itself. With thanks to Microsoft, all of this material was recorded, andis now available to view on Channel 9:
useR!2017 Recordings: useR! International R User 2017 Conference
All recordings are streamable and downloadable, and are shared under a Creative Commons license. (Note: a few talks are still in the editing room awaiting posting, but all the content should be available at the link above by July 21.) In many cases, you can also find slides in the sessions listed in the useR!2017 schedule.
With around 300 videos it might be tricky to find the one you want, but you can use the Filters button to reveal a search tool, and you can also filter by specific speakers:
Here are a few searches you might find useful:
Next year's useR! conference, useR!2018, will be held July 10-13 in Brisbane, Australia. The organizers have opened a survey on useR!2018 to give the R community an opportunity to make suggestions on the content. If you have ideas for tutorial topics and presenters, keynote speakers, services like child care, or sign language interpreters, or how scholarships should be awarded, please do contribute your ideas.
Looking even further out, useR!2019 will be in Toulouse (France), and useR!2020 will be in Boston (USA). That's a lot to be looking forward to, and with useR!2017 setting such a high a high bar I'm sure these will be outstanding conferences as well. See you there!
