37 ms·

Author here, something I've always wondered: how many software engineers are hip hop heads?

stephancoral 12y ago
I certainly count as one. And I also agree that Rae and Ghost are by far the best hip hop duo. It'd be really cool if you made this an interactive page.
- npkarnik 12y ago
  I'd love to improve the UI. My frontend skills need work, but any suggestions on javascript for interactive graphing? I played with sigma.js for about 15 minutes.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - stephancoral 12y ago
    http://d3js.org/ http://d3js.org/ is your best bet
serve_yay 12y ago
I've always wondered what about rap music makes people do these things with it.
- dapvincent 12y ago
  It's a more collaborative genre. It seems like when a rap artist releases an album nowadays, you'll see 12 tracks... with 15 different rappers on the project hehe.
  - wavefunction 12y ago
    Not many MCs can hold down an entire track by themselves.
    - sroerick 12y ago
      Also, the internet has enabled a lot of collaboration between MCs.
- sbilstein 12y ago
  Rap musicians collaborate way more than any other genre except Jazz. I've always been interested in building a map of rap references to other songs. Rap lyrics are highly referential.
- sroerick 12y ago
  Spoken word poetry goes back a long way. Verse interacts with our brain in interesting ways.
eevilspock 12y ago
Hey Nikhil. I've been wanting to do some similar link analysis (including PageRank style calculations) as well as clustering. I'm trying to decide between learning Python and R, not much free time for playing with both. What do you recommend and why? Obviously your product uses Python, but please try to be objective. Since your blog posts are clearly marketing (not a criticism), it would be very useful to also show how much it would have cost to run each step in this and other posts using Zillabyte's per hour rate. Do you realize your first name would make a great rapper handle?
- npkarnik 12y ago
  Working on a mixtape right now actually. I can't really speak to R, having barely used it, but Python is definitely better to know in general, given that it is heavily used for scientific computing/data science and many other domains. Zillabyte's original API is actually for Ruby, and we just started supporting Python recently. Ultimately, R vs Python comes down to a preference in tools. R has a large community and is specifically designed for statistical analysis, so a lot of statisticians. I would feel weird recommending a tool I don't actually use, but that's not a knock on R, just a lack of need on my end to learn it.
  - eevilspock 12y ago
    Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I need to do a lot of data and algorythm R&D on a tight budget (my savings, no income). I wonder whether it would be more cost effective for me to use Zillabyte's platform or code and deploy my own using free toolkits and run it myself on AWS, that is if I can't just run it on my MacBook.
sbilstein 12y ago
I'm a big one...so are many of my engineer friends. Awesome work!
PaulHoule 12y ago
How is it that you've got so many Sucka MC's on this list?
miles932 12y ago
+1: snoop n' dre. all day.
davidholmesnyc 12y ago
Huge hip hop head here . Great article btw
zmitri 12y ago
Mixtape Weezy is my jam

I certainly count as one. And I also agree that Rae and Ghost are by far the best hip hop duo. It'd be really cool if you made this an interactive page.

npkarnik 12y ago
I'd love to improve the UI. My frontend skills need work, but any suggestions on javascript for interactive graphing? I played with sigma.js for about 15 minutes.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- stephancoral 12y ago
  http://d3js.org/ http://d3js.org/ is your best bet

serve_yay 12y ago

I've always wondered what about rap music makes people do these things with it.

dapvincent 12y ago
It's a more collaborative genre. It seems like when a rap artist releases an album nowadays, you'll see 12 tracks... with 15 different rappers on the project hehe.
- wavefunction 12y ago
  Not many MCs can hold down an entire track by themselves.
  - sroerick 12y ago
    Also, the internet has enabled a lot of collaboration between MCs.
sbilstein 12y ago
Rap musicians collaborate way more than any other genre except Jazz. I've always been interested in building a map of rap references to other songs. Rap lyrics are highly referential.
sroerick 12y ago
Spoken word poetry goes back a long way. Verse interacts with our brain in interesting ways.

eevilspock 12y ago

Hey Nikhil. I've been wanting to do some similar link analysis (including PageRank style calculations) as well as clustering. I'm trying to decide between learning Python and R, not much free time for playing with both. What do you recommend and why? Obviously your product uses Python, but please try to be objective. Since your blog posts are clearly marketing (not a criticism), it would be very useful to also show how much it would have cost to run each step in this and other posts using Zillabyte's per hour rate. Do you realize your first name would make a great rapper handle?

npkarnik 12y ago
Working on a mixtape right now actually. I can't really speak to R, having barely used it, but Python is definitely better to know in general, given that it is heavily used for scientific computing/data science and many other domains. Zillabyte's original API is actually for Ruby, and we just started supporting Python recently. Ultimately, R vs Python comes down to a preference in tools. R has a large community and is specifically designed for statistical analysis, so a lot of statisticians. I would feel weird recommending a tool I don't actually use, but that's not a knock on R, just a lack of need on my end to learn it.
- eevilspock 12y ago
  Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I need to do a lot of data and algorythm R&D on a tight budget (my savings, no income). I wonder whether it would be more cost effective for me to use Zillabyte's platform or code and deploy my own using free toolkits and run it myself on AWS, that is if I can't just run it on my MacBook.

sbilstein 12y ago

I'm a big one...so are many of my engineer friends. Awesome work!

PaulHoule 12y ago

How is it that you've got so many Sucka MC's on this list?

miles932 12y ago

+1: snoop n' dre. all day.

davidholmesnyc 12y ago

Huge hip hop head here . Great article btw

zmitri 12y ago

Mixtape Weezy is my jam