
Bamboolib – A GUI for Pandas - StreamBright
https://bamboolib.com
======
sjcoles
> As you might know, we will start developing bamboolib as soon as we have
> 10.000 subscribers!

No, I didn't know. Not a fucking mention of it. Would have been nice to have
that on the page somewhere.

~~~
tacotime
I was going to post and ask about an estimated release date, little did I know
it would be an artificially imposed one. I was sign up number 900 something.
What happens if you guys never hit 10k signups? Is it just never going to be
released? The github repo has 200 stars but it’s just a few stub files... this
looks like a marketing campaign for a fantasy product and now I’m wishing that
I’d used a throw away email. Am I missing something? Is the code for this
actually available somewhere?

~~~
kite_and_code
We are afraid that our effort on bamboolib will be wasted if there is no real
interest in bamboolib, which is why we set ourselves the ambitious goal of 10k
subscribers. We only want to build software that people REALLY want. Also, we
developed edaviz.com and thus have opportunity costs.

The 10k subscribers is a soft goal, so we may still develop bamboolib if we
are somewhat close to it, but the 10k give us a clear threshold. Also, if we
decide not to do it, we will delete all mails. So you don't need to be afraid
that your mail gets abused.

Also please note that our landing page is just online for a couple of hours
and we have already hundreds of signups, so in my estimation, getting at least
close to 10k is very feasible. This depends of course on whether people who
really need bamboolib share it with others who also really need it. And we are
glad that we already found some people who would save between 20-40h per
month. However, the big question is: are we able to find more people like
those and are they able to find us. So, this is the challenge :) However, the
challenge is big and therefore, we need support from others who are willing to
share bamboolib if they really need it

~~~
sjcoles
> We are afraid that our effort on bamboolib will be wasted if there is no
> real interest in bamboolib, which is why we set ourselves the ambitious goal
> of 10k subscribers. We only want to build software that people REALLY want.

How do you know if they really want it if all you have to show are mock ups
and no _real_ functionality. Or even worse, using videos of OTHER SOFTWARE
without mentioning that it's lifted from that and not from a WIP or anything
like that.

This pisses me off way more than it should. The onus is ON YOU to do market
research, not for the market to do research for you. You should know if this
is in demand already or not. What's the point besides mining e-mail addresses?

~~~
kite_and_code
I want to assure you that we did not do this to mine email addresses and I am
sad to hear that you seem to have had negative experiences with this in the
past.

Also, to many people it has been very clear that this is just a product vision
when they watched the video because I mention this multiple times in the
video.

I can understand that you would prefer the "hacker way" of first coding
something before talking about it at all. Actually, this is what we did with
edaviz.com During that work we came to the hypothesis that bamboolib might be
even more interesting to many Python Data Scientists. However, we wanted to
save our coding time because we might be slower than you. And thus, we decided
for creating the vision video first.

The landing page and the email addresses helped us to get in contact with
users who are really passionate about the project and want to see it happen.
However, the features within Jupyter are to some extent different than the
features within Trifacta Wrangler which operates in the cloud. Also, the users
of Trifacta Wrangler don't have the option to fall back to real code when they
might want to.

------
dfee
The website is just a landing page with a link to the demo video (here):
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yM-j5bY6cHw](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yM-j5bY6cHw)

------
LeonM
It took me a while to figure out that Pandas is a Python Data Analysis Library
[0].

[0] [https://pandas.pydata.org/](https://pandas.pydata.org/)

~~~
aldoushuxley001
damn and here I was hoping it was a GUI for cuddly bamboo-eating bears

------
wenc
I wonder if you've come across Monarch?

[https://www.datawatch.com/in-action/monarch-
desktop/](https://www.datawatch.com/in-action/monarch-desktop/)

It's a well-known commercial package that's been around for ages and when I
saw it they seem to have some good ideas around UI for data prep (e.g. like
seeing your dataframe at every stage, reordering operations and flipping back
and forth) that could further inspire your GUI.

~~~
kite_and_code
Thank you for pointing this out. So far, we did not know about Monarch

------
kite_and_code
Thank you for sharing bamboolib, StreamBright!

I am Florian, the co-creator of bamboolib and I am happy to answer any
questions :)

~~~
StreamBright
Very interesting project indeed! Thanks for the effort put into this, I know
many data scientist who really like it.

~~~
kite_and_code
Great, what is their background? And why exactly do they like it?

~~~
StreamBright
Mostly academia. Because of the ease of use, I think. If you would like to I
could pass a questionnaire to them, asking what feature would they see the
most.

~~~
kite_and_code
That would be great! If you need any help or support, please let us know :)

------
narvind
So Trifacta on top of Pandas. OK.

~~~
massaman_yams
Yep. Some similarity to TFDV too, but the UI here looks to be more or less
lifted directly from Trifacta/Cloud Dataprep.

pro: \- Trifacta can be slow, and part of that might be the way it stores the
data (I'm assuming js data structures); if so Pandas/Bamboolib could improve
that.

con: \- Trifacta/Cloud Dataprep is directly integrated with Cloud Dataflow and
can handle jobs that would crash Pandas.

~~~
kite_and_code
Thank you for pointing out TFDV (Tensorflow Data Validation) - I had not seen
it so far.

And yes, as I say in the video, we used the Trifacta Wrangler Free Version to
illustrate the vision of what we aspire to build. In the end, it will look
different of course and we have some ideas on where we would imagine a
completely different user interface. If this will be better or worse remains
to be seen..

And thank you for the comparison of Trifacta and pandas. And I agree, that
pandas won't be able to handle any dataset size. However, I wonder if the data
set size can be increased if we also work in the cloud on machines with a
larger RAM. Or, maybe even export Dask code instead of pandas code.

So, you seem to have experience working with Trifacta Wrangler. Is there
something that you don't love about their solution?

------
lapnitnelav
Really like the idea and have been bouncing a similar idea in my head for a
while.

I think there's great value in making sure the product is a bit more intuitive
to unlock some interesting markets, beyond data science.

~~~
kite_and_code
Would be great talking to you if you are interested :)

~~~
lapnitnelav
Sure drop me an email > valentin at onload dot ie

------
andersonfreitas
Another project that could be used for inspiration here and worth checking is
[http://openrefine.org/](http://openrefine.org/)

------
doubleunplussed
A GUI for viewing dataframes is not too bad an addition, though pandas is a
very scope-creepy project. Soon it will be able to send email.

------
imdsm
Wait, is this for actual Pandas?

I'm confused. Is it like a giant iPad and they paw a square that is designed
for Pandas and they get a bamboo treat?

~~~
aldoushuxley001
No no, this is a GUI for the autoimmune disease

------
alias_cat_rm
Those guys seem to be working on another lib called edaviz. Also sounds very
interesting.

~~~
kite_and_code
This is correct. Our work on edaviz led us to think about bamboolib. What
exactly about edaviz do you find interesting?

------
tu7001
Is this free?

~~~
kite_and_code
Yes, there will be a free version. In addition, we are thinking on how to add
suitable premium services in order to fund and extend development because we
have many ideas on how to improve the Python Data Science experience :) What
are your thoughts on this?

~~~
BubRoss
Maybe you should stop lying to people first.

------
Danicode
Will I be able to export the pandas code?

~~~
kite_and_code
Yes, you can first transform the dataframe via the GUI and afterwards you can
export the resulting pandas code. So you can reproduce all the results

~~~
mellosouls
"... if and when we actually write it."

------
scheja
looks great!

~~~
simlevesque
there is nothing to look at

------
Stati1981
I think this is a very interesting direction for time consuming data prep
work. Love the idea of combining GUI elements for speed and code for
flexibility.

~~~
kite_and_code
Thank you :) how many hours did you spend working with pandas last week?

