Party Buzz Kill: Data Storage

Party Buzz Kill: Data Storage

I'm at this party where Bob and Marsha and I are discussing the best languages for programming a Raspberry Pi. Bob advocates for Python, Marsha is a devout student of C. I'm defending my use of R. After all, Raspberry Pi starts with R. We have chased all the other guests out of the room with our conversation.

"With R, I have all sorts of built-in data management," I say. "Manipulating matrices is in R's basic DNA."

Steve wanders in from the other room and joins our conversation. "Matrices aren't a proper data strategy. You should be using a database. You can run SQLite on a Raspberry Pi with hardly any effort."

Bob and Marsha simultaneously turn to stare me down. They are curious about how I'm going to get around this supposition.

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Steve is incredulous. Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko

"Sure. SQL with R--in particular SQLite, would have been easy to implement," I pontificate. "Just call up RSQLite, push a few buttons, and Bob's Your Uncle."

"And that's not what you did?" Steve is incredulous.

"I store the R object on disk and pull it into memory when I need it."

"What kind of knucklehead stores data as a file on disk?"


Read more at... https://niemannross.com/2024/04/02/party-buzz-kill-data-storage/

Guenter Faes

EigenNET Project238 followers

1y

I think I have already written an article in this context. It was about the right programming language. When it comes to data, I take a similar view. When it comes to manageable data sizes, I even save them as a CSV file for later use (I know, I know, ...). But when I "collect" data, the database system SQLite is actually my first choice on the Pi! I make a decision on what is helpful and sit between 2 chairs at the party again. 😁

Monika Wahi

DethWench Professional…8K followers

1y

Mark, I loved this and I read the blog post. I wanted to comment on the blog post but it wasn't obvious where to do that, so I'm back here. Your storytelling is so refreshing!

Al Maz

iol Academy838 followers

1y

happy to know that your organic intelligence still has a motivation )

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