Re:Pandas Exercises for Data Analysis (Interactive)
by dec0dedab0de on Wednesday March 18, 2026 @04:11PM
(#47430819)
I don’t do much work in the space, but i always liked the interface of pandas.
Wes came to my local PUG in like 2011 or 2012 and did a talk showing it off. It was also the first time I saw jupyter, which was the ipython notebook at the time. I remember being blown away by both, but I so rarely need dataframes that im sure i don’t know what im missing. I mostly only ever use it for manipulating time series data.
- Pandas is interwoven into downstream projects. So it will be here to stay for a long time. This is good for maintenance and stability. Advantage: Pandas.
- OTOH, the Pandas experience is awful; this was obvious to many from the outset, and yet it persisted. I haven't tracked the history. But my guess would be the competition from Polars was a key pressure for improvement. Edge: Polars.
- Lots of Python projects are moving to Rust-backed tooling: uv, Polars, etc. Front-end users get the convenience of Python and tool-developers get the confidence & capabilities of Rust. Edge: Polars.
- Pandas has a governance structure not tied to one company. Polars does not. (comment above said this) Advantage: Pandas.
But this could change. Polars users could (and may already be?) pressing for company-independent governance.