Hendri Adriaens wrote:
I do not come from sas, but am indeed new to stata but I am used to program
but not at yet at the abstraction level of stata. I'm sure the programs can
be made more efficient, but for now, I'm already happy if they work at all.
I'll see about the course, I have only little time and most of the
programming is done now I think.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just for the record, I wasn't trying to disparage the manner in which SAS is
programmed, or to imply that SAS programs cannot be written in efficient,
readable and maintainable code. It's just that, for a variety of reasons,
the best approach to a particular data management problem is often very
different between the two packages.
Nevertheless, many of the basic data management points made in the Stata
programming NetCourses are general concepts, and so, regardless of whether
your current project's programming is done for now, and whether you end up
using another language or package (including SAS) in a future project, you
might still benefit.
Joseph Coveney
P.S. I didn't mention it, because I wasn't sure that it would help in your
case, but keep in mind that Stata has a -set trace on- command and a
-set tracedepth . . .- command that can be judiciously placed to help debug
problems, too.
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
