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I would agree with you if it wasn't for the data.table package in R. It is a game changer. Really.

• dagw 14y ago
  Python has PyTables which complements Pandas nicely and seems to offer the same sort of features as data.table (note, I've not actually used data.table)
  • tanyaM 14y ago
    I am using R to analyse and document (knitr and latex) epidemiologic data which does not involve parsing a lot of text to extract my analysis data set. Data preparation for this type of research involves more combining data from different source tables, restructuring repeated measures, etc. I only know how to do that using R. Can Python be incorporated into the knitr literate programming framework and is it worth learning another language?
    • yihui 14y ago
      Python will be better supported in knitr in future; for now it only has preliminary support: http://yihui.name/knitr/demo/engines/ http://yihui.name/knitr/demo/engines/
• tanyaM 14y ago
  Can you elaborate on data.table being 'a game changer'. I am inclined to agree, but I'm am just starting to get a handle on it. I am still hesitant and switching between sqldf, reshape2, base::merge and data.table more than I would like. Do you think it could become a dominant method for data preparation?