**Programming Language SAS for Dummies**
The SAS programming language has been evolving for half a century. The result is astonishing: new shorthand methods have emerged. These are not immediately obvious. Here are five basic points you should consider when starting to learn SAS:
– **It’s not just a programming language.** It’s a set of capabilities. Unlike many other programming languages, it has built-in procedures and functions designed for data and statistical tasks. Other languages, such as Python or Java, require additional code libraries and packages to add the features you need. With SAS, all of this is built-in; you just need to know where to look.
– **It’s a 4GL language.** This language is known as a fourth-generation language, which means it provides a higher level of abstraction compared to functional or object-oriented languages like C or Java. The built-in operators and procedures reduce the amount of code and logic you need to write to accomplish your tasks.
– **The SAS DATA step is executed in two stages: compile time and execution time.** During compilation, the syntax is checked, the code is converted into machine language, data types and lengths are determined, and program data vectors are created. During execution, SAS reads and processes the data, performs calculations, evaluates conditional logic, and then writes any output or files. Understanding how these two stages work can help you write and debug efficient SAS programs.
– **SAS macro commands are processed and resolved first.** You can think of the SAS macro language as a text generator: it’s code that can generate — in a few lines of logic and loops — much more code, which is then compiled and executed during the runtime stage. It’s powerful and risky at the same time. That’s why it’s better to first get your core code working, and then add any macro logic you want for conditions and loops.
– **There are many ways to do almost anything in SAS.** As a programming language, SAS has been around for over 50 years, and syntax created decades ago still works today. However, for most tasks, there are also newer and better ways to achieve the same results.
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