That guy on YouTube was right about using Python for data stuff

I kept using Excel for everything until a friend kept pushing me to try Python with pandas for a project at our local makerspace in Austin. After fighting with 50,000 rows of data for three hours, I wrote a 10-line script that did the same work in 30 seconds. Has anyone else found a specific tool that made them totally switch how they approach problems?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_blair6d ago

three hours" haha rookie numbers. My first time trying pandas I spent four hours just installing packages wrong on Windows. Then another hour crying while my CSV had invisible Unicode characters. But yeah once it clicks you feel like a wizard. Now I catch myself writing Python scripts for stuff like sorting my bookmarks. It's a problem.

schmidt.grant6d ago

Man that invisible unicode thing is straight up evil. I had a csv once that looked perfect in Notepad but Python just kept throwing errors. Took me longer than I want to admit to figure out there was a hidden BOM character at the start. Now I always open those files in a hex editor first just to be safe. The bookmark sorting thing is way too real though. I literally wrote a script to rename all my music files because I got tired of manual sorting. Its like once you learn this stuff you cant stop automating random things around your life.