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copied!<p>A few books offer an "X for Y users" approach, but generally between stats software solutions. Regarding your question, I would recommend using instinct first.</p> <p>I started reading (programming and markup) code about ten years ago, and even though I cannot code in a large number of languages, I can read a few languages rather easily. I found Stata easy because most of its core commands are straightforward, with recurrent optional statements like <code>over</code>, <code>if</code> or <code>replace</code> (to take a voluntarily diverse set of statements) that are easy to understand and then apply.</p> <p>When I teach Stata, I always have problems getting students to use the <code>help</code> pages as much as I do (and I love the fact they can be accessed so easily, just like in R). I explain the paradox by considering the fact that I can read the syntax indications straightaway. Syntax is very well covered by the previous reply to your question.</p> <p>The extra mile consists in opening the [R], [U] and especially [P] handbooks that come with Stata in the <code>utilities</code> folder. There is a wealth of details there, which will interest both programmers and training statisticians. This is where I learnt to use macros and loops, beyond the obvious logic of commands like <code>local</code>/<code>global</code> and <code>foreach</code>/<code>while</code> (if I understand the term correctly, Stata is Turing-complete).</p> <p>Stata is sometimes a bit of a pain when it comes to using single/double quotes in macro loops, but it's pretty straightforward otherwise. Have fun!</p>

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