We don't need data scientists, we need data engineers

Re:We don't need data scientists, we need data engineers by singhrac on Thursday January 14, 2021 @02:49PM (#25781468)

> If they're using a dynamically typed language to do monetary calculations, it's not going to be ideal.

I think this is an inaccurate take. No one in finance is doing accounting or model estimation using Python's floats; they are using numpy's float32 (or float64) type instead. I think a more accurate version of what you're saying is that static type checking is useful when modeling complicated contracts; this might be true, but I think it's not that important, as those things aren't that liquid anyway.

Jane Street's decision to use OCaml is almost as much about hiring and history as it is about language features.

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Re:We don't need data scientists, we need data engineers by twic on Thursday January 14, 2021 @02:53PM (#25781543)

> No one in finance is doing accounting or model estimation using Python's floats

We are. When your input data only has five significant figures, and probably less than that of real information, numerical accuracy is the least of your worries.

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Re:We don't need data scientists, we need data engineers by aldanor on Thursday January 14, 2021 @03:26PM (#25782007)

Or, they're using ints instead, at least for market data.

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Re:We don't need data scientists, we need data engineers by proverbialbunny on Thursday January 14, 2021 @03:28PM (#25782028)

Fixed precision types technically. Internally they are an int under the hood, so yah basically that.

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