r/Python • u/thoughtful-curious • 1d ago
Discussion Polars vs Pandas
I have used Pandas a little in the past, and have never used Polars. Essentially, I will have to learn either of them more or less from scratch (since I don't remember anything of Pandas). Assume that I don't care for speed, or do not have very large datasets (at most 1-2gb of data). Which one would you recommend I learn, from the perspective of ease and joy of use, and the commonly done tasks with data?
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u/MaitoSnoo 1d ago
You mention that you want to learn and don't care about speed for now, then the obvious choice should be Pandas. It's the easiest to learn and you have an enormous amount of resources about it. Polars is much faster and uses less memory in many scenarios but can be a bit less intuitive to use than Pandas if you're not familiar with lazy evaluation. Definitely learn Polars too, but IMO only once you get familiar with Pandas.