Python is not a great language for data science
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Python is not a great language for data science
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Re: Python is not a great language for data science
#2> I think people way over-index Python as the language for data science. It has limitations that I think are quite noteworthy. There are many data-science tasks I’d much rather do in R than in Python.1 I believe the reason Python is so widely used in data science is a historical accident, plus it being sort-of Ok at most things, rather than an expression of its inherent suitability for data-science work.
Python doesn't need to be the best at any one thing; it just has to be serviceable for a lot of things. You can take someone who has expertise in a completely different domain in software (web dev, devops, sysadmin, etc.) and introduce them to the data science domain without making them learn an entirely new language and toolchain.
Re: Python is not a great language for data science
#3Article is well written but fails to address its own thesis by postponing it to a sequel article. At its current state only alludes that Python is not great because requires specialized packages. (And counterexample is R for which also used a package.)
Re: Python is not a great language for data science
#4> I think people way over-index Python as the language for data science. It has limitations that I think are quite noteworthy. There are many data-science tasks I’d much rather do in R than in Python.1 I believe the reason Python is so widely used in data science is a historical accident, plus it being sort-of Ok at most things, rather than an expression of its inherent suitability for data-science work. Python doesn…
That's not why it's used in data science though. Lots of data scientists use Python all day and have no concept of ever working in a different field.
It's used in data science because it's used in data science.
Re: Python is not a great language for data science
#5A little late for this
Re: Python is not a great language for data science
#6Article is well written but fails to address its own thesis by postponing it to a sequel article. At its current state only alludes that Python is not great because requires specialized packages. (And counterexample is R for which also used a package.)
Totally agree. The author's most significant example is two code snippets that are quite similar and both pretty nice.
Re: Python is not a great language for data science
#7> I think people way over-index Python as the language for data science. It has limitations that I think are quite noteworthy. There are many data-science tasks I’d much rather do in R than in Python.1 I believe the reason Python is so widely used in data science is a historical accident, plus it being sort-of Ok at most things, rather than an expression of its inherent suitability for data-science work. Python doesn…
That's not why it's used in data science though. Lots of data scientists use Python all day and have no concept of ever working in a different field. It's used in data science because it's used in data science.
But data science usually isn't an island.
Use whatever you want on your one off personal projects but use something more non-data science friendly if you ever want your model to run directly in a production workflow.
Productionizing R models is quite painful. The normal way is to just rewrite it not in R.
Re: Python is not a great language for data science
#8From many practical points, Clojure is great for data. And you can even leverage python libs via clj-python.
Re: Python is not a great language for data science
#9> I think people way over-index Python as the language for data science. It has limitations that I think are quite noteworthy. There are many data-science tasks I’d much rather do in R than in Python.1 I believe the reason Python is so widely used in data science is a historical accident, plus it being sort-of Ok at most things, rather than an expression of its inherent suitability for data-science work. Python doesn…
That's not why it's used in data science though. Lots of data scientists use Python all day and have no concept of ever working in a different field. It's used in data science because it's used in data science.
That's probably true now, but at one point, they were looking for people to start doing data science, and were pulling people from other domains.
Re: Python is not a great language for data science
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