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Is “data scientist” the new “programmer”?

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Re: Is “data scientist” the new “programmer”?

#51

Post by garyclarke27 »

mgummelt wrote: post #38
garyclarke27 wrote: post #34

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…

SQL is not more expressive than Turing Complete languages, no.

They’re all Turing complete inc SQL with case and recursion. I meant density, 1 line of a code, a SQL window function with a filter clause would probably take a page of Java to achieve the same result.

Re: Is “data scientist” the new “programmer”?

#52

Post by elcapitan »

httpz wrote: post #27
denzil_correa wrote: post #18

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.

Then there should be a field "Science studies" that combines both unscientific worlds.

Re: Is “data scientist” the new “programmer”?

#53

Post by codazoda »

vostok wrote: post #39
3rdAccount wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. 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 acc…

Some even have engineer in their titles with no degree at all.

Re: Is “data scientist” the new “programmer”?

#54

Post by xaranke »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #42
danso wrote: post #36

This is such a bizarre post. The reason why people use a language like R is because it is easy to learn and use (and install, via RStudio) for data analysis without having to be a well-trained programmer. I can’t recall ever hearing from anyone who has relied on R, doing so because it was computationally efficient. The point of the language is convenience — particularly with how easy it is to create attractive graphi…

The fact that R has such buy-in despite being a rather awful programming language (a friend of mine worked on the next Lisp-like version of R under Ross Ihaka, and the next version is based on the fact that current R is a bit awful) is precisely because it offers such convenience to non-programmers. In my sister company, they have data scientists, and data engineers. The data scientists write their algorithms in the…

Can you elaborate more on the "algorithms in JS" bit? What libraries/tools are they using? Why JS versus Python or JVM languages?

Re: Is “data scientist” the new “programmer”?

#55

Post by dasil003 »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #14
closeparen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah! At my company a decent proportion of engineers spend their lives scrambling to productionalize and operate the Lovecraftian concoctions of R and Python that our data scientists cook up on their laptops.

Where I work, the data scientists are more educated and experienced on containerization, CI tooling, unit testing, profiling tools, web service prototyping including API validation tools, caching layers, queues, GPU systems programming, etc. etc. We are constantly thwarted by infrastructure teams that use superficial policy basically so they can whine and complain that they don’t want to have to provide support for t…

If the data scientists know more about CI, unit testing, profiling, and caching than the engineers then they are better engineers and I'd wonder a bit about their math/stats chops and whether their role was just re-branded "data scientist" to keep up with trends.

Re: Is “data scientist” the new “programmer”?

#56

Post by 3rdAccount »

vostok wrote: post #39
3rdAccount wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. 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 acc…

Unless you have a professional engineers license, you can't testify in court as an engineer. To get a professional engineer's license, you must graduate from an ABET accredited program.

Re: Is “data scientist” the new “programmer”?

#57

Post by engi_nerd »

closeparen wrote: post #6
sigfubar wrote: post #4

No. Data scientists exist at the mercy of programmers: without the tooling and the pipes, data science would not be a going concern.

Hah! At my company a decent proportion of engineers spend their lives scrambling to productionalize and operate the Lovecraftian concoctions of R and Python that our data scientists cook up on their laptops.

At my company, I don't have a staff of engineers to productionalize things so I have to do it myself.

Re: Is “data scientist” the new “programmer”?

#59

Post by mythrwy »

xaranke wrote: post #54
EdwardDiego wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that R has such buy-in despite being a rather awful programming language (a friend of mine worked on the next Lisp-like version of R under Ross Ihaka, and the next version is based on the fact that current R is a bit awful) is precisely because it offers such convenience to non-programmers. In my sister company, they have data scientists, and data engineers. The data scientists write their algorithms in the…

Can you elaborate more on the "algorithms in JS" bit? What libraries/tools are they using? Why JS versus Python or JVM languages?

Seconded. "Data scientists" and "being most comfortable writing in JS" just sounds strange to me.

Re: Is “data scientist” the new “programmer”?

#60

Post by whoisthemachine »

vostok wrote: post #39
3rdAccount wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. 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 acc…

Someone can certainly call themselves an "engineer", but it doesn't have the same consequences as someone who has received an ABET accredited engineering degree... for example, if you've graduated from an ABET accredited engineering degree, you are able to become a licensed and registered professional engineer - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_en....
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