Data scientists and data engineers like Python and Scala

Python and Scala are popular among members of several well-attended SF Bay Area Meetups

By Ben Lorica
November 30, 2013
Ben Lorica Ben Lorica (source: O'Reilly)

In exchange for getting personalized recommendations many Meetup members declare topics that they’re interested in. I recently looked at the topics listed by members of a few local, data Meetups that I’ve frequented. These Meetups vary in size from 600 to 2,000 total (and 400 to 1,100 active) members.

I was particularly interested in the programming languages members expressed interest in. What I found confirmed trends that we’ve noticed in other data sets (online job postings): Python has surpassed R among data scientists and data engineers, Scala is second to Java among JVM languages, and many folks are interested in Javascript. As pydata tools mature, I’ve encountered people who have shifted more of their data workflow from R over to Python.

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Popular programming languages for select Meetups

Given that it’s written in Scala it’s not surprising that Spark Meetup members expressed an interest in that language. But Scala is twice as popular than Clojure among members of the other three Meetups I examined (including the Storm users group).

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