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No, shut up. What statistical programming languages can learn from Dropbox.

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Re: No, shut up. What statistical programming languages can learn from Dropbox.

#51
post #32

To be honest I find the whole repeated "no, shut up" thing to be a bit crass and it makes me unsympathetic if anything. I hope this doesn't become a catchphrase in blogs.

I thought it was perfect in the original dropbox quora post, but I agree that it doesn't quite fit here, and there is certainly a danger of it becoming a meme.

No, shut up.

Re: No, shut up. What statistical programming languages can learn from Dropbox.

#52
Maybe I'm just a simpleton, but it seems odd to attack something designed to make statistics analysis easy for statisticians, because it doesn't meet the needs of mid-level managers.

Managers and other folks who need to make pivot tables, graphs and related things without programming have a great tool to do that: Excel. For these people, Excel is Dropbox.

Re: No, shut up. What statistical programming languages can learn from Dropbox.

#53
funny, Dropbox makes it happen w/ Python:

"Dropbox uses Python on the client-side and server side as well. This talk will give an overview of the first two years of Dropbox, the team formation, our early guiding principles and philosophies, what worked for us and what we learned while building the company and engineering infrastructure. It will also cover why Python was essential to the success of the project and the rough edges we had to overcome to make it our long term programming environment and runtime."

http://us.pycon.org/2011/blog/2011/02/07/pycon-2011-announci...

Re: No, shut up. What statistical programming languages can learn from Dropbox.

#57
post #9
post #2

The code that makes him say "what a mess," I think is beautiful: def summary(data, key=itemgetter(0), value=itemgetter(1)): for k, group in groupby(data, key): yield (k, sum(value(row) for row in group)) Perhaps that's because I'm a programmer, and Python is a general purpose programming language. But I think that's what his complaint boils down to: the Python statistical code looks too much like Python . Which, yeah…

Yes, I like the Python also, but you have missed the point. For MBA-types, business types, and scientists the programming concepts are too much to learn. Why should they have to learn programming when their needs are simple? It is not just "keep it simple", it is "keep it simple" for non-programmers.

A) Any half-competent scientist is comfortable programming. B) Some programming is even required in a lot of undergrad business/MBA programs C) What the author really means by "MBA-types" are morons. So, yes there is a market for an user-friendly domain specific statistical language. It's called SAS. It's expensive. But it does the thinking for you...if you're a moron.

Also, none of this has anything to do with Python, which is an absolutely beautiful language.

Re: No, shut up. What statistical programming languages can learn from Dropbox.

#58
Anytime I hear a discussion about designing computational tools for "non-programmers" I'm reminded of the subway in Mexico City, Mexico. The subway stops have nicely detailed pictures that are descriptive of the locations around the stops. This is because many people are illiterate. It's about time people realized that programming is literacy.

Also, leave Python alone!

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