AI Stories Polars: Fast & Efficient Data Manipulation with Ritchie Vink #60
Apr 24, 2025
In this engaging discussion, Ritchie Vink, Founder and CEO of Polars—a high-performance data manipulation library—shares his journey from civil engineering to programming. He dives into how Polars started as a side project, emphasizing its key differences from Pandas. Ritchie explains the importance of query optimization and introduces Polars Cloud, which simplifies remote query execution. He also reflects on the challenges facing Polars and offers career advice, encouraging listeners to pursue projects they love.
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From Civil Engineering To Coding
- Ritchie started as a civil engineer and learned programming to automate calculations in his day job.
- He moved into data work after building tools to transfer BIM models and got addicted to software development.
Polars Began As A Rust Side Project
- Ritchie began Polars while learning Rust and wanting simple CSV joins without building SQLite pipelines.
- He implemented a prototype, compared it to Pandas, and then dove into performance and databases to improve it.
Why Declarative Queries Enable Big Optimizations
- Query optimization rewrites declarative queries for performance rather than executing them literally.
- Techniques include column pruning, early filters, deduping subplans, and expression simplification.