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Why data scientists should start learning Swift

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Re: Why data scientists should start learning Swift

#61
post #58
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an argument for starting at 1, not at 0. At age 0, you have no elements in your array of years. So the first year is also element 1. If you want code to reflect the way you've done counting and arithmetic your whole life, you'd want it to start at 1.

That would be defining it as a time span and using the time since start as index. Which to me is one step away from using the timepoint as the index iteself (zero as start), verus (1 year from zero). How would you index the time before the first birthday?

Insofar as a timespan is the same as counting years, then yes. If elements in the array are years, then the time before your first birthday doesn't appear.

Re: Why data scientists should start learning Swift

#62

Python seems a lot more "fun" than Swift IMO

How do you mean? I'm a big fan of Python, so I'm just curious what you mean here. Swift has a lot of great language features that Python lacks, in my opinion. (My first favorite: native option types. Second favorite: internal and external function parameter names. There are more, but these are my top two.)

i like Swift, i think, but prefer something more dynamically typed i guess. Swift gives me that “i’m using C++” feeling.

Re: Why data scientists should start learning Swift

#63
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But contrary to this Fortran code, in order to understand my code, you first have to learn this library Do you ? I've used Eigen and boost a lot of times and didn't ever need to "learn how the sausage is made", just looking at examples is enough to get stuff to work.

Whether you look up examples or a reference documentation does not change the fact that ontop of a given language, you learn new concepts of a library. In contrast, domain specific languages have exclusive support for certain data types built right into the heart. There is a need for that.

I don't really understand the difference between reading three pages of documentation on a language website or two pages on a language website and one page on a library website.

Re: Why data scientists should start learning Swift

#64

Why would you use Swift as your new data science language when Julia was made for that purpose and Swift was not? Julia's data structures, functions, syntax and libraries were all designed with scientific computing in mind. Swift was designed for general purpose app development.

I think it’s addressed in the article. He wants one language that spans many domains, including mobile. He even addresses Go in the comments section as not being available on Android.

Personally, I’m not aware of the ability to write mobile apps in Julia.

If I’m wrong, please post links, as that would certainly open up the conversation.

Re: Why data scientists should start learning Swift

#65
post #16

Correct title: Why TensorFlow developers should start learning Swift Why on earth should data scientists ditch the IPython/Jupyter/SciPy/etc. ecosystem?

I think there is a subtlety you missed in the article. He didn’t say ditch Python, he said learn Swift. He simply states that 10 years from now people will be using Swift, not Python.

Obviously he may be wrong, but it’s certainly reasonable prediction.

Re: Why data scientists should start learning Swift

#66

I hope swift gets serious about serving the needs of data scientists tool — it would not take that much work to improve swift playgrounds to the point to enable a far better dx than can be had with Jupyter notebooks or matlab ...

Agreed. I monitor this page [1].

So far, no Swift. :(

[1] https://github.com/jupyter/jupyter/wiki/Jupyter-kernels

Re: Why data scientists should start learning Swift

#67
post #66

I hope swift gets serious about serving the needs of data scientists tool — it would not take that much work to improve swift playgrounds to the point to enable a far better dx than can be had with Jupyter notebooks or matlab ...

Agreed. I monitor this page [1]. So far, no Swift. :( [1] https://github.com/jupyter/jupyter/wiki/Jupyter-kernels

Just found this. Not sure how good it is, but it’s a start....

https://repl.it/languages/swift

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