What is the best programming language for operationalizing research questions with large data sets? [closed]

Question

I have completed my graduate public policy program but it was not at all tech heavy - some economics and econometrics but not requiring any CS knowledge. A good portion of the research jobs in DC require a basic level of programming knowledge. Mostly they want people who can perform advanced search and retrieval functions with large datasets and save stuff in different formats within their servers. And, they want STATA/stats knowledge, which I have some of.

My question is this: where is the best place to start learning some programming to get to this level? For instance, is Java, SQL, VBA or something else the best thing and most useful for these purposes? And, how much math do I need to write and run simple requests?

Thanks

Answer 1

My name is Alvaro. I worked as a senior bioinformatician on huge gene databases. Studied Bioinformatics at Harvard.

The script language you need for that is Perl.

Then you need a full understanding of SQL. All of that you can find it on the web.

If you get to be advanced you can also use R Programming language for Statistics. Check the web about the R Project. And also MathLab.

But not all at once!

Forget about Java or VBA for those purposes.

good luck

Answer 2

For statistics and database querying/manipulation I would start with SQL.