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by orochimaaru 297 days ago
If you’re using some variety of spark for your data engineering then scala is an option too.

In general, choice of language isn’t important - again if you’re using spark your data frame structure schema defines that structure Python or not.

Most folks confuse pandas with “data engineering”. It’s not. Most data engineering is spark.

1 comments

in spark, doesn't pyspark and sql both still get translated to scala?
Yes. But with pyspark there is a Python gateway, the sql I think is translated natively in spark.

But when you create a dataframe in spark, that schema needs to be defined - or if it’s sql takes the form of the columns returned.

Use of Python can create hotspots with data transfers between spark and the Python gateway. Python UDFs are a common culprit.

Either way, my point is there are architectural and design points to your data solution that can cause many more problems than choice of language.