About coding in Finance
So I have been overwhelmed with deciding whether to choose R, SQL, Python to learn since each department of finance requires a different coding language. My take so far is to learn data manipulation, data wrangling, and visualization with R, then move on to data management with SQL Server, parallel learning Excel, then specialize Python for financial tasks such as credit modeling, GARCH modeling. Is this the ideal path for me while in college or should I drop some of them? Any advice is appreciated, TIA!
If your aim is IB then you don’t need any of those except intermediate excel going in. None of my finance classes in college used the rest and I’m a recent grad.
If I were you, I would prioritise Python over R because the latter is more used in academia than in the industry.
As far as SQL is concerned, you can learn the the basics pretty quickly so I would begin with that first.
R and Python are both great, can’t go wrong either way. Python is probably stronger for longer term career quant skills, but R has some great data visualization tools. Wouldn’t hurt to have strength inn both.
R is better for research, Python is better for production. You can do virtually all data wrangling tasks in either, however I prefer using R because less code is often needed for a similar task in Python.
R Studio (The most popular IDE) just implemented Python compatibility, so you can use either language when working on projects.
FWIW, some will say learn what the office uses, but in my experience it boils down to “here’s a problem, use whatever tools available to solve it”. If you can master one, learning the other isn’t too difficult
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