Programming with LLMs in R & Python

This public repository contains the materials for the "Programming with LLMs in R & Python" workshop, taught at the North East Data Science meetup in November 2025.

Content

• slides/ - html slides for chapters 1, 2 and 3
• scripts/ - live demo scripts and exercises for chapter 2

Prerequisites

If you would like to take part in the workshop you will require:

• A working installation of either R or Python (if you have both then just pick your favourite language).

• We will be using the {ellmer} package for R and the chatlas package for Python. These are available to install via CRAN and pip, respectively.

  • For R users: install.packages("ellmer")

  • For Python users: pip install chatlas

You will also require an "API key" in order to interact with a large language model. Any LLM is fine, whether it's ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini, etc.

If you don't already have an API key, I recommend generating one for the free tier of Google Gemini. Just to warn you, Google will be able to use your information to improve it's services, so avoid including any confidential or senstive code in your prompts!

Google Gemini API key instructions:

• Visit this webpage: https://aistudio.google.com/app/api-keys

• Click "Create API key"

• Make up a name for the key

• In the dropdown options, click "Create project" and make up a project name

• Finally, click "Create key"

• Expand the created key and copy the "API key" sequence

• Store it under an environment variable called GOOGLE_API_KEY or GEMINI_API_KEY

You may need to restart your laptop or RStudio session for the environment variable to become activated.