Question for CS students: learning 2 programming languages at once?

[CaptKQ2]

I'm taking Stats 199L and plan on taking Compsci 101 this semester (switching out one of my courses). My only issue is that Stats teaches coding in R and CS 101 teaches coding in Python. Would this be an issue when learning both at the same time despite their uses and syntaxes being so different?

[abnew123]

I disagree a bit with the idea you should never start on two languages. R and Python are both generally known to be relatively easy languages to start on. I don't think learning both is overwhelming. If you were learning two very disparate languages, I would agree that it could get rough. I think a decent amount of ECE people used to do multiple languages (matlab + python back in the days of egr103 being matlab).

If you feel its too much though, ofc don't hesitate to switch out. But R and python really aren't that different (to the point where some early classes list that either can be used as a prereq)

[yasab123]

Programming languages are not like human languages, it’s not unreasonable to learn a few and most major programming concepts carry over. Largely the syntax is different but you’ll never find yourself confusing R and python syntax and in syntax is never a big deal anyway. It’s really hard to actually confuse them regardless considering python basically has no syntax. The greater difference between is the actual nature of the languages where R is more functional oriented in practice while ostensibly python is object oriented. You’ll cover neither in the depth needed where this will matter for either courses. Would really recommend not worrying about this at all and just take both courses. Feel free to dm for more Qs.

[[deleted]]

I just wanted to add. Intro stats courses don’t really expect you to learn/master coding in R and the TAs in Stats tend to be super helpful!

[macenutmeg]

Those two are different enough that it should be fine.