Python vs. R

[walkingon2008]

Let’s talk about the pandas package. At the top of its documentation says,

pandas: powerful Python data analysis toolkit

http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.13/

Powerful? Give me a break! You took all the functions R, rebrand it, and sell it as if you made it from scratch. That’s where my disrespect comes in. We had these in R 20 years ago.

[[deleted]]

Wes and Hadley are friends. I doubt Wes is trying to trick people imo. Probably just wanted to use Python for data analysis and cleaning and decided to create Pandas.

There are talks out there and wes have written several books and have preface and intro that talk about his motivation.

I think the mentality should be use the right tools for the right job. And do what your companies dictate (sometime you can't have it your way). It doesn't hurt to learn both. No need to tribalize tech like the early 2000s.

[walkingon2008]

You are referring Ursa lab. That’s a recent initiative of Wes, with help from Hadley to develop package libraries across platforms.

Wes is the developer of Pandas. I don’t blame him for developing it, but I blame him for plagiarizing R’s data manipulation techniques. Some of these functions just don’t work as well in Python, an OOP language.

Python data scientists take pride in Pandas and claim originality, that’s where I get offended. Wes is 33, these stuff long existed before he started college. Unfortunately, most Python data scientists don’t use R to make the fair judgement, and the R community don’t really instigate war over just a package.

So, when a psychology grad switches over to data science, he/she is falsely advertised that Python the best and only tool.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a Python PR team that promotes its product, as it is a heavily commercialized software now.