Engineers to Data-Scientists with Python
summary
A MATLAB monolith with 50,000 lines and zero tests migrates incrementally to Python using Docker, AWS Batch/ECS, S3 and Airflow while calling between MATLAB and Python via a wrapped serialization layer; an initial one‑month refactor named Opportunity October breaks production but leads to formalized heuristic tests with pytest, parameterized fixtures, and faster iteration. Half the analysis pipeline ends up 50% rewritten, production bug rate falls ~30%, feature velocity temporarily slows, and training uses pairing, code reviews and lunch‑and‑learns.
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chapters (40)
- 0:00Introduction
- 0:31What will I talk about
- 1:12About me
- 1:34What we do
- 2:14Technical context
- 2:37Deployment
- 2:52Business Context
- 3:14Analysis Pipeline
- 3:33Reliability Analysis
- 4:09Advantages of Python
- 4:47Risks of Python
- 5:49Project Pigeon Rat
- 6:10Preparing for Python
- 6:33Separating Core Analysis from Abstract Data
- 6:52Pure Functions
- 7:20Abstracting Data
- 7:35Data Access Layer
- 7:48Christmas Eve
- 8:05Why not just roll back
- 8:33Postmortem
- 9:40Heuristic Tests
- 10:20Inversion Speed
- 12:23Managing Configuration
- 13:34Global State
- 14:02Retro
- 14:38Empathy
- 15:38Reframing
- 16:49Moving to Python
- 17:53Python rewrites
- 18:41Pain points
- 20:34Whats a mechanical engineer
- 20:49Whats a data scientist
- 21:17Being an effective data scientist
- 22:01Traditional approach
- 22:35How do I make one
- 23:15Whats separating engineers and data scientists
- 24:18Our process
- 25:11Some thoughts
- 25:52Key bits
- 26:23Wrap up
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