Things to do before asking for help
Being proficient in R does not equate to sitting down and writing everything free-hand. Experienced R users search online and ask LLMs. The great thing about R is that there are often multiple solutions to a coding problem. What often separates an experienced user from a new user is that the experienced user knows what to search for and where. We suggest you search on StackOverflow; this can be daunting at first but is extremely helpful once you’ve learned to find your way around.
As a next step, it can be useful to use AI-tools like ChatGPT; however, beware that these can make up functions, that it often still requires debugging, and that even working solutions (especially to more complex questions) can be unstable over time or across datasets.
Asking a clear coding question
Some issues are simple; e.g., “I cannot download this package”. Other times what you want to do is more complex and needs context to explain to someone on the outside. Therefore, you need to prepare and provide the context to the person you are asking for help. This includes showing the structure of your dataset, presenting the functions you’ve used, and describing what you have tried so far.
The first lesson in the coding café was specifically about preparing a good question (read the notes about minimal, reproducible examples).
Note about sensitive data
you are not allowed to show the data to anyone else! This is your own responsibility, and the helpers will not check what platform you’re working on.
You may need to prepare your question a bit more. Still, the principles of the minimal, reproducible example apply.