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R Passes SAS, but Python Leaves Them Both Behind

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Re: R Passes SAS, but Python Leaves Them Both Behind

#61

Post by fnord123 »

Xcelerate wrote: post #20

I recently finished grad school and accepted a data scientist job a couple weeks ago in part because the job description mentioned expertise with Julia as one of the preferred qualifications (it's rare to see a listing that mentions Julia). It's the language I used for the bulk of my research over the last four years, and has been improving rapidly since it was released. I like Julia a lot more than Python, and I hop…

> I think once it hits v1.0, we'll begin to see a lot more companies adopting its usage for data science, statistics, and machine learning.

I don't. It doesn't have the incumbency of R, the use in other areas of programming of Python, or a company actively marketing it like MATLAB. It's not 5x or 10x or whatever good enough than the alternatives to assert itself in the playing field.

If it means you get your work done using it, be all means use it. But I think it will stay around clojure levels of use in data science, statistics, and machine learning.

Re: R Passes SAS, but Python Leaves Them Both Behind

#62

Post by whyrt12 »

fnord123 wrote: post #61
Xcelerate wrote: post #20

I recently finished grad school and accepted a data scientist job a couple weeks ago in part because the job description mentioned expertise with Julia as one of the preferred qualifications (it's rare to see a listing that mentions Julia). It's the language I used for the bulk of my research over the last four years, and has been improving rapidly since it was released. I like Julia a lot more than Python, and I hop…

> I think once it hits v1.0, we'll begin to see a lot more companies adopting its usage for data science, statistics, and machine learning. I don't. It doesn't have the incumbency of R, the use in other areas of programming of Python, or a company actively marketing it like MATLAB. It's not 5x or 10x or whatever good enough than the alternatives to assert itself in the playing field. If it means you get your work don…

Once you can compile a julia app- front end, back and probabilistic prog/ML to web assembly and have it run in browser and mobile, it will skyrocket in popularity.

Re: R Passes SAS, but Python Leaves Them Both Behind

#63

Post by fnord123 »

whyrt12 wrote: post #62
fnord123 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think once it hits v1.0, we'll begin to see a lot more companies adopting its usage for data science, statistics, and machine learning. I don't. It doesn't have the incumbency of R, the use in other areas of programming of Python, or a company actively marketing it like MATLAB. It's not 5x or 10x or whatever good enough than the alternatives to assert itself in the playing field. If it means you get your work don…

Once you can compile a julia app- front end, back and probabilistic prog/ML to web assembly and have it run in browser and mobile, it will skyrocket in popularity.

Why? The only current benefit of Julia afaict is the tracing jit. If you run the tracing jit on web assembly then it's giving up most of its performance benefits. And Python could be built on web assembly as well.

But who knows. Weird things seem to become popular despite all the negative points.

Re: R Passes SAS, but Python Leaves Them Both Behind

#64

Post by whyrt12 »

fnord123 wrote: post #63
whyrt12 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you can compile a julia app- front end, back and probabilistic prog/ML to web assembly and have it run in browser and mobile, it will skyrocket in popularity.

Why? The only current benefit of Julia afaict is the tracing jit. If you run the tracing jit on web assembly then it's giving up most of its performance benefits. And Python could be built on web assembly as well. But who knows. Weird things seem to become popular despite all the negative points.

It does not have a tracing JIT, and its speed is by far not the only benefit. See link below

It can precompile very fast code before runtime.

Python will require an interpreter and or hefty runtime.

https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-motivation-why-weren...

Re: R Passes SAS, but Python Leaves Them Both Behind

#65

Post by fnord123 »

whyrt12 wrote: post #64
fnord123 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The only current benefit of Julia afaict is the tracing jit. If you run the tracing jit on web assembly then it's giving up most of its performance benefits. And Python could be built on web assembly as well. But who knows. Weird things seem to become popular despite all the negative points.

It does not have a tracing JIT, and its speed is by far not the only benefit. See link below It can precompile very fast code before runtime. Python will require an interpreter and or hefty runtime. https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-motivation-why-weren...

Forgive me, it's not a tracing JIT but just LLVM's JIT.

Precompiling in Julia is extremely not-straight-forward. You would think you just use --compile and it would work; but it doesn't at all.

Also, at ~850kb, Python's runtime is not that hefty. It's intended to be embedded and while it's quite a bit larger than lua's 200kb, but smaller than libjulia's 16mb.

Re: R Passes SAS, but Python Leaves Them Both Behind

#66

Post by statsmatscats »

fnord123 wrote: post #65
whyrt12 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not have a tracing JIT, and its speed is by far not the only benefit. See link below It can precompile very fast code before runtime. Python will require an interpreter and or hefty runtime. https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-motivation-why-weren...

Forgive me, it's not a tracing JIT but just LLVM's JIT. Precompiling in Julia is extremely not-straight-forward. You would think you just use --compile and it would work; but it doesn't at all. Also, at ~850kb, Python's runtime is not that hefty. It's intended to be embedded and while it's quite a bit larger than lua's 200kb, but smaller than libjulia's 16mb.

Right, It can currently precompile to some extent, but full source-to-binary-blob-compilation is on the roadmap. See here: http://juliacomputing.com/blog/2016/02/09/static-julia.html

Julia's runtime includes its compiler and full huge standard lib, but of which are eventually going to be split off, IIUC.

The former because of static compilation potential and the latter into modules that can be included piecemeal.

Re: R Passes SAS, but Python Leaves Them Both Behind

#67

Post by Arizhel »

metaobject wrote: post #38
brogrammernot wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. So far in my search, C# leans toward Microsoft shops seeking C#/.NET whereas C/C++ has been companies searching for embedded software roles.

Mostly agree, but I've also seen a fair bit of C/C++ skills associated with jobs involving *nix development environments. I've rarely seen C++ associated with embedded jobs (even though I've read that it can certainly be used if care is taken to avoid things like dynamic dispatch, etc)

C++ is used in avionics.

Re: R Passes SAS, but Python Leaves Them Both Behind

#68

Post by yuubi »

gone35 wrote: post #48
charles-salvia wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first time I tried to read R code I was immediately disgusted with how '.' is a valid variable name character. Not only valid, but inexplicably also in common use.

That's in part because, unaccountably, '_' denotes assignment in S.

> unaccountably

Maybe because in ASCII-63 the _ codepoint meant left-arrow (which was preserved in at least smalltalk systems much past the 60s)?

Re: R Passes SAS, but Python Leaves Them Both Behind

#69

Post by shanusmagnus »

gone35 wrote: post #48
charles-salvia wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first time I tried to read R code I was immediately disgusted with how '.' is a valid variable name character. Not only valid, but inexplicably also in common use.

That's in part because, unaccountably, '_' denotes assignment in S.

My theory is that they might have been trying to protest against the non-mathematical theft of = (equality) to mean assignment, as = is used in most other languages. (Not that that's an excuse for violating the shit out of the Principle of Least Surprise in a trillion different ways.)

Re: R Passes SAS, but Python Leaves Them Both Behind

#70

Post by R_haterade »

blauditore wrote: post #56
R_haterade wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal, but our SAS decision support environment went down Friday. I can report back after the post-mortem if you like.

Yeah, would surely be interesting.

Nothing exciting to report. It was a resource-sizing problem and they didn't adequately separate prod and dev environments. Someone choked the dev and the prod went down with it.
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