Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 15:48:33 -0500
Reply-To: "Seltzer, Jon D." <SeltzerJD@PHIBRED.COM>
Sender: "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>
From: "Seltzer, Jon D." <SeltzerJD@PHIBRED.COM>
Subject: Re: SAS skill levels
Content-Type: text/plain
Each application in SAS has an entry, middle and advanced level. Some
of the applications may be loosely correlated with respect to skill.
For example you can have a person whose skills are entry level in base
SAS programming, or middle level in base SAS programming, or advanced
level in base SAS programming. This is a very important distinction.
It could very well be the case that it takes the advanced base SAS
programmer 1 hour to write a program in 50 lines of code that will take
the middle level SAS programmer 3 days and 300 lines of code.
For example you could have a entry to middle level programmer write SAS
code that uses the macro language, where an advanced base programmer may
write more efficient code without the macro language in a quicker amount
of time.
On the other hand there are some things that cannot be done efficiently
with respect to data manipulation without the macro language. Very often
it is the case the more tools the middle programmer is exposed to, the
more tools or applications they can abuse. Advanced statistical
programming using SAS procs, base SAS and IML requires more of a
knowledge of statistics and how SAS computes them than base SAS
programming. I have known some excellent statisticians that can program
proc mixed code for complex experimental designs that would make your
head spin, but are not that good at base SAS code, SQL, AF, etc. that
may be used in cleaning and preparing the data sets to be analyzed.
Similar analogies hold for SQL and the other applications. The only way
I have found to figure out how good a programmer is in a particular
application is to have a look at their code for a variety of things they
have programmed.
-----Original Message-----
From: Surai Thaneemit-Chen
[mailto:surai@MAILSVR.ICON.PALO-ALTO.MED.VA.GOV]
Sent: Thursday, August 13, 1998 11:40 AM
To: SAS-L@VM.MARIST.EDU
Subject: SAS skill levels
Hello,
I would like to ask any SAS instructors/trainers reading this
message
about the set of SAS skills that may be used to determine the level of
programming in SAS.
For example:
Entry level Base SAS, basic procedures
Mid level SAS/Macro, SAS/Graph, SAS/STAT
Senior level SAS/SQL, SAS/IML, and other more specialized
applications
Of course this topic is subjective and I am interested in hearing any
and all comments.
Thank you,
--
Surai Thaneemit-Chen
Statistical Programmer
surai@mailsvr.icon.palo-alto.med.va.gov
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