GopherCon 2021 Lightning Talk

This Lightning Talk, delivered online as part of GopherCon 2021, argued for the use of Go in data science, along with Python and R. Tom Miller’s presentation falls between minutes 41 and 51 of the recording.

Backward compatibility is a key feature of Go, making the Go codebases easier to maintain over time. Donald Knuth had the right idea. When he got to version 3.14 of TeX, he declared that there would be no new versions of the language, no new features, only bug fixes. And with each bug fix, he would borrow another digit from π (pi). In Knuth’s words: “I strongly believe that an unchanging system has great value, even though it is axiomatic that any complex system can be improved. Therefore I believe that it is unwise to make further ‘improvements’ to the systems called TeX and METAFONT. Let us regard these systems as fixed points, which should give the same results 100 years from now that they produce today.” See Knuth’s original article: TUGboat, Volume 11 (1990) No. 4.

A detailed review of Northwestern’s current data science curriculum and specializations is available on the MSDS program website.

Back to the initial blog page Tom Miller on Go and Data Science.