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Abstract Classes: A Software Engineering Concept Data Scientists Must Know To Succeed
Simple concepts that differentiate a professional from amateurs
If you are planning to go into data science, be it a graduate or a professional looking for a career change, or a manager in charge of establishing best practices, this article is for you.
Data science attracts a variety of different backgrounds. From my professional experience, I’ve worked with colleagues who were once:
- Nuclear physicists
- Post-docs researching gravitational waves
- PhDs in computational biology
- Linguists
just to name a few.
It is wonderful to be able to meet such a diverse set of backgrounds and I have seen such a variety of minds lead to the growth of a creative and effective data science function.
However, I have also seen one big downside to this variety:
Everyone has had different levels of exposure to key Software Engineering concepts, resulting in a patchwork of coding skills.
As a result, I have seen work done by some data scientists that is brilliant, but is:
- Unreadable — you have no idea what…

