Ask HN: What is the best functional programming language for data science?

📰 Hacker News · ptwobrussell

Explore Haskell, OCaml, and Clojure for data science to find the best functional programming language fit

intermediate Published 29 Dec 2013

Action Steps

Explore Haskell's core language features and its libraries for math and machine learning, such as HMatrix and GHC
Investigate OCaml's strengths in areas like static typing and its popular libraries, including Owl and OPAM
Evaluate Clojure's dynamic typing and its ecosystem of libraries, such as Incanter and ClojureML
Compare the communities and third-party frameworks of each language to determine the best fit
Apply functional programming concepts to a data science project using one of these languages to assess its effectiveness

Who Needs to Know This

Data scientists and machine learning engineers can benefit from functional programming languages for more efficient and composable code, and should consider exploring these options with their team

Key Insight

💡 Functional programming languages can bring efficiency and composability to data science tasks, and the right choice depends on the specific needs and domains of the project

Key Takeaways

Explore Haskell, OCaml, and Clojure for data science to find the best functional programming language fit

Full Article

I'm currently exploring Haskell, OCaml, and Clojure with respect to not only the core language features themselves, but also with respect to their communities and third-party frameworks for math and machine learning. I'm mostly interested in the best "general purpose functional programming language for data science" but would also be curious which functional languages have a particularly strong hand within specific domains (e.g. medical, finance, etc.)

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