> At some point in their careers, almost every data scientist has written code to perform a series of steps, and thought, βIt would be great if I could build these transformations visually rather than by writing code.β
I have been in a data science career for nearly six years, now, and I have never thought this. Not once. Further, I don't know of a single colleague or associate who has thought such a thing.
I've been in one for just slightly longer, and I absolutely adore visual tools (SSIS). My coworker despises them. We are similarly experienced and similarly productive.
After some discussion, the difference seems to stem from our own mental design patterns. When I design and visualise a data process, I literally draw and diagram on paper in the same way that a visual tool represents it. His own prototyping is notes in the form of pseudocode.
Don't underestimate the human equation at work here. This debate might not ever be 'solved'.
This may be controversial, but I completely agree. Let's say 7 - 10 years experience here myself.
You know who has said that? Management and marketers and it's driving me batty. A paradigm is being pushed on us, and I'm sorry, but the most productive members have always been coders and the best solutions/implementations in my experience have always been coders.
Now what I have got a lot of experience in its going in and fixing/refactoring solutions written in point and click out derived from copy/pasting templates.
I'm not saying no visualisation or visual coding, our that maybe there isn't a field or context where it works or could be better. I'm open to new experiences and techniques.
But my experience so far is otherwise in this case. And I know this goes against the executive and startup propaganda, since every man and his dog is trying to sell yet another point-click drag-drop visual analytics solution, and every executive seems to want the "do analytics without having to have skilled labor or actual knowledge of analytics", but let's just say I'll risk it to make the comment...
I have been in a data science career for nearly six years, now, and I have never thought this. Not once. Further, I don't know of a single colleague or associate who has thought such a thing.