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Python, Machine Learning, and Language Wars (2015)

sebastianraschka.com

41–50 of 62 posts

Re: Python, Machine Learning, and Language Wars (2015)

#41
post #40
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

believe it or not, there are some people who know R and face overhead to learn Python. and they love ggplot2. and frankly, Python has no libraries for interactive visualization in your browser because only JavaScript runs there. etc.

Python has no libraries for interactive visualization in your browser because only JavaScript runs there Isn't that like saying that C has no visualization libraries on Intel processors because only assembly runs there?

[deleted]

Re: Python, Machine Learning, and Language Wars (2015)

#42

I'm surprised the article doesn't mention Anaconda, which is Python with all the things he lists pre-installed for you. I've been a fan for some time now: https://www.continuum.io/why-anaconda

I totally echo this. In my opinion, if Python was the Linux Kernel, Anaconda would be Ubuntu: i.e., it ensures that you are actually up and running within minutes and not struggling in the missing-header-files or dependencies-management hell.

Of course, there's time and place for eschewing Anaconda, especially if you are trying to ensure your installation and dependencies are minimal. That said, for most data scientists who are workaday *NIX users at best, Anaconda is such a productivity boost.

EDIT: Actually, my analogy needs further qualifications. You _can_ get into dependencies/missing-header-files hell in Ubuntu, but it usually doesn't happen in the first few hour/days. Both Ubuntu and Anaconda have great "first 5 minutes to 5 days" experience, and that goes a long way in ensuring the adoption of underlying technology.

Re: Python, Machine Learning, and Language Wars (2015)

#43
post #38
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://bokeh.pydata.org/en/latest/ "Bokeh is a Python interactive visualization library that targets modern web browsers for presentation." (Of course, it works by generating JavaScript)

right, and in order to really customize what bokeh does you need to write JS in strings in your python code, so this just proves my point. http://bokeh.pydata.org/en/latest/docs/user_guide/interactio... see the CustomJS function.

No you don't. It now does python to JS compilation. And that's if you want client side callbacks.

Re: Python, Machine Learning, and Language Wars (2015)

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, I remember when I was trying my first language other than BASIC (VB6, perhaps? or maybe 1995 era JS?) and it bugged me that "x = y" wasn't the same as "y = x". Remembering it as "LET x = y" was helpful.

People have been upset about that since at least the 1950s. A lot of people who make programming languages use the := for the assignment operator instead.

Helps when you prounounce the assignment operator as "becomes" rather than "equals", too.

Re: Python, Machine Learning, and Language Wars (2015)

#45

   I know what you want to ask next: “Okay, what about turning my model into a nice and shiny web application? I bet this is something that you can’t do in R!” Sorry, but you lose this bet; have a look at Shiny by RStudio A web application framework for R.
True, but it is a dumpster fire.

Re: Python, Machine Learning, and Language Wars (2015)

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would always be worried with installing numpy/scipy via pip that I wouldn't be linking to BLAS/LAPACK correctly.

What do you mean? I have always installed via pip with zero errors on all three platforms.

The worry is not that it will throw an error, it's that it will silently link against lower-performance math libraries and make your code inexplicably slow.

Re: Python, Machine Learning, and Language Wars (2015)

#47
post #28

why pick just one language? with the polyglot Beaker Notebook, you can work with many languages, even in the same notebook, and your data is automatically translated between them. each of these languages has its strong point. there is always some library you want to use in some other language. or you want to collaborate with someone. or next year you change your mind and Julia is finally good enough. http://BeakerNot…

I really like Beaker. However Jupyter also caters to a wide range of languages, albeit one language per notebook. So the main differentiator for Beaker is that it can auto translate data between languages. However there is a giant catch to that: it is done by serialising the data which intrinsically means it is extremely expensive for any significant sized data set. As a result, in most cases I end up writing my data out to a file in one language, then reading it in again in another, even when I'm using Beaker, because the auto-translation is just too inefficient to do through Beaker's process.

However both Beaker and Jupyter lag behind RStudio in raw usability and convenience, especially for plotting. There doesn't seem to be any tool in this vein that "has it all" right now.

Re: Python, Machine Learning, and Language Wars (2015)

#48
post #32
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wheel is a binary distribution, so files would already be compiled and therefore python-dev would not be needed anymore.

Is wheel not default? Or play it elementary :-) how would I avoid this issue in the future?

I did not write anything worthy to send to PIP so don't know exactly but looks like it is up to the developers[1]

Anyway I just noticed that PyPI only supports binary packages for Windows and Mac OS X. Although, you could still generate wheels of packages that you use by using something like this:

    pip wheel -r requirements.txt
You can then install them with pip install or (unfortunately I forgot the option, perhaps it was -i) you can use an option to point to a directory containing wheels and pip install to install the main package. It should use all dependencies in that directory as well.

[1] http://pythonwheels.com/

Re: Python, Machine Learning, and Language Wars (2015)

#49

I'm surprised the article doesn't mention Anaconda, which is Python with all the things he lists pre-installed for you. I've been a fan for some time now: https://www.continuum.io/why-anaconda

I have anaconda installed at work/windows and home/linux. One minor annoyance is that it doesn't play well (at all?) with virtualenv. They worked so hard to get a huge suite of off the shelf third party libraries integrated, it's curious that they would come up with a replacement for virtualenv.

I'm halfway hoping that I don't know what I'm talking about.

Re: Python, Machine Learning, and Language Wars (2015)

#50
post #49

I'm surprised the article doesn't mention Anaconda, which is Python with all the things he lists pre-installed for you. I've been a fan for some time now: https://www.continuum.io/why-anaconda

I have anaconda installed at work/windows and home/linux. One minor annoyance is that it doesn't play well (at all?) with virtualenv. They worked so hard to get a huge suite of off the shelf third party libraries integrated, it's curious that they would come up with a replacement for virtualenv. I'm halfway hoping that I don't know what I'm talking about.

http://conda.pydata.org/docs/using/envs.html

Glad to help :)

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