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.

One of Go’s key advantages is its backward compatibility. The core Go developer team is reluctant to introduce new features to the language.

When TeX reached version 3.14, the value of pi, Donald Knuth declared that there would be only bug fixes to TeX, no new versions. 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 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.