Peter Wang — Anaconda, Python, and Scientific Computing

Peter Wang talks about his journey of being the CEO of and co-founding Anaconda, his perspective on the Python programming language, and its use for scientific computing.

Peter Wang has been developing commercial scientific computing and visualization software for over 15 years. He has extensive experience in software design and development across a broad range of areas, including 3D graphics, geophysics, large data simulation and visualization, financial risk modeling, and medical imaging.

Peter’s interests in the fundamentals of vector computing and interactive visualization led him to co-found Anaconda (formerly Continuum Analytics). Peter leads the open source and community innovation group.

As a creator of the PyData community and conferences, he devotes time and energy to growing the Python data science community and advocating and teaching Python at conferences around the world. Peter holds a BA in Physics from Cornell University.

Topics covered:
0:00 (intro) Technology is not value-neutral; Don't punt on ethics
1:30 What is Conda?
2:57 Peter's Story and Anaconda's beginning
6:45 Do you ever regret choosing Python?
9:39 On other programming languages
17:13 Scientific Data Management in the Coming Decade
21:48 Who are your customers?
26:24 The ML hierarchy of needs
30:02 The cybernetic era and Conway's Law
34:31 R vs python
42:19 Most underrated: Ethics - Don't Punt
46:50 biggest bottlenecks: open-source, python

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[borjonx]

This is incredible - thank you so much for sharing! I came here expecting a technical deep dive but was pleasantly surprised and motivated by your thoughtful questions and his awesome, well-informed & timeless answers. Peter is a very well versed engineer - I hope the US Congress calls upon him to help address some of the impending ethical & technical issues.

[ran_domness]

Great talk. Loved the background. :)

Priceless overview of ML landscape in business.

[mehuljain]

What a wonderful podcast, really got some deep insights about scientific computing 👍

[AladdinPersson]

I really like listening to your podcast :)

[henrikvendelbo]

Just leave corporate IT to die, there is nothing worth preserving