Lesson Contribution: two suggestions to enhance the content

[Talishask]

I'm a member of The Carpentries Core Team and I'm submitting this issue on behalf of another member of the community. In most cases, I won't be able to follow up or provide more details other than what I'm providing below.

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1. Include some brief information at the beginning of the course outlining the differences and advantages/disadvantages between common programming languages such as R, Python, Java and the like. This is a common question that is asked by attendees at the start of courses that I have taught. I suggest the best place to include this content may be at the very beginning when introducing R.

2. I am sure this has been suggested before, but I propose including a note and perhaps an exercise or two to demonstrate that R can be used as a simple calculator, i.e. you can do simple arithmetic. I often incorporate a simple sum into the Analyzing Patient Data module, mainly to make attendees who may be uncomfortable with programming comfortable and confident that they can actually complete a task in the programming environment at the very beginning. I think this is a valuable confidence boost for attendees and they can immediately identify the utility of R, notwithstanding it is a very rudimentary function that can be completed by a normal calculator. I suggest it could be included just before the variable assignment exercise.