Feb 27 2025 55 mins 2
In this episode of Inspiring Computing, Marco Gorelli discusses the unexpected success of Narwhals, a highly downloaded and extremely lightweight and extensible compatibility layer between data frame libraries such as pandas and polars. We dive into Marco's inspiring journey from a mathematics background to becoming a key contributor in the open-source community.
Marco shares his initial struggles, motivations, and the eventual widespread adoption of narwhals. The conversation goes into the technical underpinnings of his project, from the importance of typing to robust testing techniques. He highlights collaborations, testing practices, and the challenges of maintaining backward compatibility. This episode is both a technical deep dive and an inspiring story of persevering through challenges and negativity to make a substantial impact in the open source ecosystem.
Here are a few links:
Quansight YouTube Channel to see Marco coding live.
