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Data Scientist has two terms in it : Data + Science. More often than not, people ignore the "Science" part of that equation.
Someone said any field with "Science" in the name isn't really a science. Computer science, data science, political science, social science, etc. Physics, chemistry, biology don't have science in their name.
It’s a testament to the R library’s developers (particularly Hadley Wickhan) for making APIs that do so well in streamlining data work. But I’m willing to bet a majority of R users, particularly in academia, could not load a simple delimited data file without a high-level call such as read.csv.
(By “simple”, I mean a delimited text file that could be parsed with regex or even split. I don’t expect the average person to be able to write a parser that dealt with CSV’s actual complexity)
I wonder why "data engineer" isn't one of the suggested terms. Scientists do not really program science, nor do programmers research programs, as their respective fields of expertise.
That is not to say programming isn't a difficult job that requires a lot of analytical and creative thinking similar to an engineer. The difference is in getting a degree in something that has 4-5 years of calculus based math, physics...etc classes. There is also a rigorous 8 hour test to get a license after 4 years on the job.
I guess the broad term of building something and doing analysis fits here, but I don't see any Data Engineers in practice. What I see are Data Scientists and Data Analysts. Of course I'm arguing over semantics here, but it is important to get the distinction correct.
True - Superficially SQL may appear to be simple, old fashioned and a bit verbose, but once you are expert with it (takes at least 5 years) is amazingly powerful. Operates at a much higher abstraction level than Java, Python etc, so is I would guess 25 times more expressive. Postgresql pure SQL CTE’s give you variables and recursion PLpgsql gives you dynamic sql for macro/meta programming. If you use immutable tables…
I wonder why "data engineer" isn't one of the suggested terms. Scientists do not really program science, nor do programmers research programs, as their respective fields of expertise.
To be nitpicky, in the US, engineer means you graduated from an ABET accredited program in something like: Chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering, industrial engineering, computer engineering....etc. That is not to say programming isn't a difficult job that requires a lot of analytical and creative thinking similar to an engineer. The difference is in getting a degree…
Do you happen to have a reference for this? At first glance, it seems to be incorrect rather than nitpicky.
Anecdotally, I know plenty of people who do not have ABET accredited degrees and have "engineer" in their title in the US.
I wonder why "data engineer" isn't one of the suggested terms. Scientists do not really program science, nor do programmers research programs, as their respective fields of expertise.
To be nitpicky, in the US, engineer means you graduated from an ABET accredited program in something like: Chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering, industrial engineering, computer engineering....etc. That is not to say programming isn't a difficult job that requires a lot of analytical and creative thinking similar to an engineer. The difference is in getting a degree…