The path for non professionals to learn SPL

Learn programming

Starting from SPL Programming, here is video course.

This book is aimed for non professionals and does not require programming experience. A high school math foundation is sufficient.

Chapters 1-4 introduce basic program logic (variables, branches, loops, etc.), which is also included in most programming languages. Except for Section 4.4 Understanding object, which has some depth and requires more time to understand, the learning difficulty of other parts is not high, and guys with Excel foundation can easily master them.

Chapter 5 begins to introduce some unique styles of SPL programming, which are different from other programming languages. After understanding and mastering them, you can write elegant code. The last section 5.7 of Lambda syntax is somewhat profound for non-professionals, and if you find it difficult to understand, you can skip it without affecting your subsequent learning.

Chapters 8-11 on structured data are the focus, and the knowledge of structured data concepts discussed here is even more extensive and in-depth than professional database textbooks. Even those with SQL experience need to relearn, but the difficulty of understanding this part is not high, especially with the concept of object mentioned earlier. Moreover, the structured data operations of SPL have good consistency, and the concepts and styles are unified throughout the SPL system, which is also in line with the concept of set operations mentioned earlier. In contrast, Python has invented too many different objects that adapt to different scenarios, making it difficult for people to remember and understand.

Chapter 12 Graphics can be used as optional reading content. Nowadays, there are many visualization tools, and it is not necessary to use SPL to draw graphics. However, after understanding the principles of these graphics, you can draw some characteristic statistical charts invented by yourself.

The book link above includes some practice exercises at the end of each chapter, and there are more comprehensive exercises in Exercise, and there are example datasets available for download in the comments.

General Data Table Operations in SPL and General Operations on Cursors in SPL use text files as data sources to illustrate the common SPL functions.

Furthermore, there are more sample codes available in Calculation Logic for practice and reference. Among them, File Operations lists some common tasks for data files.

About Excel users and data analysts

For people who handle Excel on a daily basis and some data analysts, most of their work involves writing formulas for calculations and transformations, and rarely involves procedural code. In this situation, on the one hand, there is no need to learn the aforementioned program logic (SQL is like this, using it does not require understanding concepts such as variables, branches, and loops). On the other hand, the difficulty of using common programming languages is indeed very high, which leads many people to think they cannot master programming and give up. They always think that writing a few formulas like Excel is much easier than learning programming, and hope to skip this part and learn a skill that can be used for Excel processing or data analysis without programming.

In fact, the basic programming logic is not difficult, even easier than mastering VLOOKUP in Excel, and the difficulty is much lower than using complex functions (such as DAX) in data analysis. And with this knowledge, writing formulas and doing calculations will become more proficient (such as introducing intermediate variables). The reason why you find it difficult is because popular programming languages are not easy enough, and the difficulty has been artificially raised. For SPL, there is no such issue, so it is recommended to continue learning in the order mentioned above instead of skipping the basics.

Chapter 1 of esProc Desktop and Excel Processing introduces some common Excel file processing and calculation methods, which are tasks frequently encountered in daily data processing; Chapter 2 introduces the usage of SPL XLL, which allows users to directly write SPL code in Excel to enhance its computational capabilities; Chapter 3 introduces the method of interacting with the clipboard and Excel; Afterwards, hundreds of Excel calculation examples are collected and organized, covering various aspects of daily work. Familiarity with these examples will enable a more comprehensive grasp of SPL functions, and skills need to be mastered in practice.

The Desktop processing section will continue to collect and provide answers to questions related to desktop data processing,, which can be used as further code references.