I strongly recommend Kit's book for you when it appears.
In addition to other suggestions, note that the entire contents of the
STB and SJ up to three years ago are in the public domain. See e.g. the
announcement
<http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/lwgate/STATALIST/archives/statalist
.0803/Author/article-528.html>
That includes several articles with tutorial flavour relevant to
programming in the wide sense.
In addition, several other articles relevant to programming have also
been published over the last three years.
Nick
[email protected]
Kit Baum
Jacob said
Am I correct in believing that neither the Web nor the help files is
a substitute for the hard-copy Stata manuals?
Yes. But I think when it comes down to it that even a full set of the
Stata manuals will leave you wanting. As an example, if you work
solely with the Stata manuals, you will have a hard time programming
maximum likelihood evaluators. The book by Gould et al. is
indispensable in that regard.
Another poster suggested taking the Stata net courses. An excellent
suggestion.
Mention was made of my forthcoming "An introduction to Stata
programming." I hope that this book will soon be available; the draft
manuscript is in the copyediting stages. The book is designed to
assist anyone who wants to use .do, .ado or Mata programming
effectively. It expands upon the "..goes a long way" talk.
You might also, in the meanwhile, find my talk at last year's German
SUG meeting, "Should you become a Stata programmer?" useful:
http://ideas.repec.org/p/boc/dsug07/00.html
*
* 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/
