Course introduction
Description
This course is designed to guide you through the foundations of professional R programming with an emphasis on best practices, version control, and reproducibility. You’ll start by setting up your development environment in RStudio and learning essential shortcuts and tips. From there, you’ll explore how to write clean, efficient code using the tidyverse style guide and apply functional programming principles to streamline and scale your workflows.
A key focus of the course is version control with Git and GitHub. You’ll learn how to configure your environment, manage repositories, and collaborate effectively with others. Practical, hands-on exercises will reinforce these skills as you build and refactor a real-world project, transitioning it into a reproducible, function-based pipeline. By the end, you’ll be equipped to develop R projects that are robust, maintainable, and easy to share.
Prerequisites
Basic/intermediate knowledge of R is required.
Course contents
In this section, you can see a non-exhaustive summary of what you will cover in this course.
Mastering R: Best Practices and Essential Tools
Unit 1 - Course Introduction
- Course overview and objectives
- Installing and configuring RStudio
- How to access and use course materials
Unit 2 - RStudio and Good Practices
- Optimizing your RStudio setup
- Working with RStudio Projects
- Essential shortcuts and workflow tips
- Writing clean and readable R code
- Adopting the tidyverse style guide
Unit 3a - Version Control with Git and GitHub (Configuration)
- Installing Git and connecting with GitHub
- Authenticating with GitHub (2FA and tokens)
- Configuring Git for your local projects
Unit 3b - Version Control with Git and GitHub (Workflows)
- Creating and cloning repositories
- Understanding repository privacy
- Standard Git workflow (commit, push, pull)
- Undoing changes: reset, revert, restore
- Branching strategies and collaboration
- Working with others using GitHub
Unit 4 - Building a Real Project
- Applying Git, RStudio, and coding practices in a real-world scenario
- Creating a reproducible and collaborative R project
Unit 5a - Functional Programming (Theory)
- Principles of functional programming in R
- Writing functions: from basic to advanced
- Introduction to tidy evaluation
- Using iteration with `purrr`
Unit 5b - Functional Programming (Practice)
- Refactoring the real-world project using functions
- Implementing modular and reusable code
Unit 6 - Reproducible Environments
- Understanding packages, libraries, and repositories
- Creating reproducible setups using `renv`
- Managing R versions and environments
- Best practices for project portability and consistency
What’s inside the course
100 lessons
9 hours of video
All the course materials
Theoretical classes and practical sessions
Quick answer to any student’s question
What will you learn
In this course, you’ll gain the essential skills to develop high-quality R projects with professional tools and workflows. From clean coding practices and version control to functional programming and reproducible environments. Specifically, you will learn to:
Configure RStudio for efficient development
Write clean and modular R code
Use Git and GitHub for version control and collaboration
Apply functional programming principles in real projects
Create reproducible environments using
renvand project-based workflows
Student testimonials
Here you can find all the testimonials left by students of this course (both positive and negative).
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Guido De Gregório Grimaldi
Excellent—congratulations on the course! A vital resource for those committed to collaborative science, transparency, and reproducibility.
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Muhammad Hafiq Syazwan bin Abu Johan
Very nice course
A
Angelika Mroncz
Alles super! :)
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Laura Haack
Gut strukturierter Aufbau des Kurses. Der Dozent erklärt die Inhalte nachvollziehbar und es werden relevante Themen bearbeitet.
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José Luis Martínez Ramírez
CIDRE cuenta con mucha capacidad, no obstante su edad. cuento con muchos cursos de Udemy y al identificar su primer curso del instructor me he inclinado a adquirir varios de el. Muy bueno y recomendable. Solo espero que lance curso sobre Machine Learning & predicción de principio a avanzado en cualquier idioma a lo que estaré atento.
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John Willoughby
Excellent course! I thought I knew a lot about R but this course took my knowledge to another level. Excellent demonstrations of how to use git, github, and Renv for version control. Adrian is an excellent instructor. I also took his Udemy course on Spatial Analysis and GIS in R and I highly recommend that course as well.
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George Theodoropoulos
Excellent course !!
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Gabriele Giuseppe Antonio Satta
Cidree, you are the best ! 😉
J
José Luis
Very complete and well structured course. The instructor's explanations are clear and easy to understand. The hands-on projects were especially helpful.
D
David Gonzalez
The course is full of very useful stuff that I haven't seen before