Are you using R? Do you want write nice R code? By ‘nicer’ we mean code that is easy to write, is easy to read, runs fast, gives reliable results, is easy to reuse in new projects, and is easy to share with collaborators. At the nice R code site, we are trying to help researchers (mostly biologists) get the most out of their code by communicating the elements of work flow and good coding habits that help transform code from messy to nice.

Our material is targeted at researchers who are already using R and want to take their coding to the next level. Over the last 10 years, many biologists have started coding. But they . We will try to persuade you why writing nice R code is important, and show you how to achieve it. We don’t claim to be experts, but we are passionate and more experienced than many of our peers.

The inspiration for nice R code came in part from attending a boot camp run by Greg Wilson from the software carpentry team. These boot camps aim to help researchers be more productive by teaching them basic computing skills. Unlike other software courses we had attended, the focus in the boot camps was on good programming habits and design. As biologists, we saw a need for more material focused on R, the language that has come to dominate biological research.

Nice R code team

The blog is run by Rich FitzJohn and Daniel Falster. We are postdocs in Mark Westoby’s lab at Macquarie University, in sunny Sydney, Australia.

Rich FitzJohn

On github, twitter, and the web. Follow @phylorich

Daniel Falster

On github, twitter, and the web. Follow @adaptive_plant