Agreed. Outside the world of ML (but working with reasonably large data, ie a few billion rows of server log entries in varying formats) I had some success grab

Agreed. Outside the world of ML (but working with reasonably large data, ie a few billion rows of server log entries in varying formats) I had some success grabbing a narrow slice (single-digit millions) and experimenting w/ ways to query it using combination of regex and SQL, thanks to an amazing little powertool called lnav (https://lnav.org https://lnav.org). It's like an intuitive, scriptable, mini-ETL on the commandline you can learn in no time. I once used it to track down the root cause of a p0 in prod, in parallel to the ops gurus and most senior devs using dedicated tools and processes; we arrived at the same conclusion around the same time, and the stuff I'd extracted helped speed the patch. Felt pretty good, and I've been singing lnav's praises ever since. Shoot I must be getting old, rambling on a tangent. Get off my lawn! ;)