I agree with you in theory. I really hate that the fast.ai course uses their own fast.ai library. Numpy is a bit different though as it “fixes” inefficiencies

I agree with you in theory. I really hate that the fast.ai course uses their own fast.ai library. Numpy is a bit different though as it “fixes” inefficiencies in Python’s typing system. A list of Python integers is actually a list of C structs so none of the values are sequential in memory. A numpy array of integers is sequential in memory and so the performance gains are massive. It’s not so much a library as it as a way to access efficient data types/structures. I think any mathematical programming in python should start with numpy. If the author had used Pandas extensively I would agree with you completely.