Site icon Ryan Swanstrom

GoLang for Data Science

Golang for Data Science

Golang for Data Science

While it is not one of the popular programming languages for data science, The Go Programming Language (aka Golang) has surfaced for me a number of times in the past few years as an option for data science. I decided to do some searching and find some conclusions about whether golang is a good choice for data science.

Popularity of Go and Data Science

As the following figure from Google Trends demonstrates, golang and data science became trendy topics at about the same time and grew at a similar rate.

Golang vs Data Science growth in popularity

The timely trends may have created the desire to merge the two technologies together.

Golang Projects for Data Science

Some internet searching will reveal a number of interesting data-focused projects on Github. Unfortunately, many of the projects had good initial traction but have dwindled in activity over the last couple years. Below is a listing of some of the data science related projects for the Go Programming Language.

Golang Data Science Books

There have even been a couple books written about the topic.

Machine Learning with Go, 2nd Ed.

The second edition was just published in 2019

Go Machine Learning

Go Machine Learning Projects

This book uses gonum and gorgonia in the examples. It was published in 2018.

Thoughts from the Community

The “Go for Data Science” debate has been discussed numerous times over the past few years. Below is a listing of some of those discussions and the key take aways.

Reasons to use Go for Data Science

Reasons Not to use Go for Data Science

Summary

In short, Golang is not widely used for exploratory data science, but rewriting your algorithms in Golang might be a good idea. However, the latest push is “Python for Machine Learning and Go for Infrastructure”.

For more data science related articles, read the rest of the Data Science 101 blog.

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