R itself is well equipped with documentation, which ships with every

distribution of R and the R add-on packages. But a good overall

picture, how R concrete is used in nowadays bioinformatics software

development, was always missing.



If you are interested in bioinformatics software developing, and you

aren't looking for a book which is just explaining how to do standard

biological data analysis within R, or how to solve statistical

problems whit R, but how to implement R-code for the biological

research field - this is the book! The book goes in a reasonable deep

through the whole guts of the R language and the core of the

bioconductor project. Detailed material can then always be found in

the substantial official documentation.

This book was written by a master wizard of the filed - Robert

Gentleman, R developer form the beginning on and member of the

[...] project core team.



Recently another book - R in a Nutshell, which promises to go through

the R guts in a same manner, was published by the famous O'Reilly. I

haven't read 'R in a Nutshell' yet, so I can't compare. However, to

bioinformaticians whit a programmer's angle I can warmly recommend 'R

Programming for Bioinformatics'. For me it was a pleasure to read. And

it remains one of the best guideline and source to start tackling R

software development challenges, in unfamiliarly and new informatics

fields.