Half Stack Data Science

In the first episode of the new season, we discuss:

• whether it's a good thing that we can produce more with GenAI,
• how GenAI will force us to consider the purpose of education,
• how we are supposed to develop wisdom if GenAI can just build everything for us,
• how AI-written code introduces "cognitive debt",
• and in a roundabout way we discuss whether GenAI will kill software companies

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David’s book, The Well-Grounde...

In this episode, we wrapped up 2025 by reflecting on what we talked about on the podcast, where AI is and where it's heading, and looked ahead to 2026. We also discussed some of our favourite sci-fi books we read last year!

Links from the show:

- that YouTube video Shaun mentioned, "Are we stuck with the same Desktop UX forever?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fZTOjd_bOQ

- our interview with Scott Hanselman wh...

In this episode, we spoke to Kirsten Hill.

Dr Kirsten Hill is a researcher, writer, and the founder of bisque — a survey platform that actually cares if you get good data. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, has led research for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and has worked with over 100 mission-driven teams on measurement & evaluation. This past year, she authored her first book, Ask Better Questions,...

In this episode, we spoke to Richard Makara and Niko Korvenlaita who are CEO and CTO of reconfigured.

reconfigured is a journal app that makes it incredibly easy to capture and retrieve on-going notes, thoughts & insights. Richard is the CEO and he has led growth and built go-to-market data systems in high-growth scale-ups. Niko is a second time founder and the CTO. He has been building end-to-end machine learning applications s...

In this episode we talked to Simon Willison.

Simon is the creator of Datasette, an open source tool for exploring and publishing data. He currently works full-time building open source tools for data journalism, built around Datasette and SQLite.

Prior to becoming an independent open source developer, Simon was an engineering director at Eventbrite. Simon joined Eventbrite through their acquisition of Lanyrd, a Y Combinator funded c...

Season 4, all about AI, has launched! In the first episode of the new season we talked to Scott Hanselman.

Scott is a programmer, teacher, and speaker. He works out of his home office in Portland, Oregon for Microsoft as the Vice President of Developer Community. He works on .NET, Open Source, and the Azure Cloud Developer Experience, but he also blogs about technology, culture, gadgets, inclusion, code, the web, where we're...

In this episode, Shaun interviews David about his new book, The Well-Grounded Data Analyst.

We talk about the data skill gap between the classroom and the real world that made David want to write this book, the importance of tackling real-world projects for further learning, and the underlying methodology of the book that helps you learn to solve any data problem.

If you listen to the end, we also tease our upcoming Season 4 ...

If you're an aspiring analyst and want to test your existing data skills on real-world problems while learning both new skills and a framework you can apply to any problem, David's book Solve Any Data Analysis Problem is available on the Manning website through the Early Access Program and it's out in print later this year.

Find it at https://www.manning.com/books/solve-any-data-analysis-problem

In this episod...

A reminder that David's book, Solve Any Data Analysis Problem, is out later this year and you can already buy it and read it in its draft form as part of Manning's Early Access Program. If you want to practise your data skills on real world problems and learn a reusable framework to use on any project in the future, this book is for you.

Find out more here: ⁠https://www.manning.com/books/solve-any-data-analysis-problem⁠

Now...

A reminder that David's book, Solve Any Data Analysis Problem, is out later this year and you can already buy it and read it in its draft form as part of Manning's Early Access Program. If you want to practise your data skills on real world problems and learn a reusable framework to use on any project in the future, this book is for you.

Find out more here: https://www.manning.com/books/solve-any-data-analysis-problem

Now o...

A reminder that David's book Solve Any Data Analysis Problem is available in Manning's Early Access Program!

You can read more about it here: ⁠https://www.manning.com/books/solve-any-data-analysis-problem⁠ (if it's not on offer when you're there, you can get 35% off with the code au35asb).

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In today's episode, we talked to Kat Greenbrook. Kat is a Data Storyteller f...

First of all, David's book Solve Any Data Analysis Problem is available in Manning's Early Access Program!

You can read more about it here: https://www.manning.com/books/solve-any-data-analysis-problem (if it's not on offer when you're there, you can get 35% off with the code au35asb).

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In this episode, we talked to James Cotton, co-founder of iO-Sphere.

Canadian origin...

In this episode, we continued our season of talking to data educators and spoke to Laszlo Sragner.

Laszlo runs Hypergolic, a boutique consultancy in London specialising in Machine Learning Product Management.

Formerly, he was Head of Data Science at Arkera, a fintech startup in London, where he built market intelligence products with Natural Language Processing for Tier 1 investment banks and hedge funds.

Before that, Laszlo worked...

Continuing our series of conversations with data educators, in this episode we spoke to Valerie Logan.

Founding The Data Lodge in 2019, Valerie is as committed to data literacy as it gets.  She believes that in today's digital society, data literacy is not just a work skill- it's a life skill.  With advisory services, train-the-trainer bootcamps, an extensive resource library and community services at The Data Lodge, Valeri...

In this episode of Half Stack Data Science we continue our season 3 all about data science education, with a conversation with Matt Harrison.

Matt stands as a prominent figure in the Python and data science community. A Stanford Computer Science alumnus, he's made significant contributions through his best-selling books, which include titles like "Effective Pandas", "Effective XGBoost", "Machine Learnin...

In this episode of Half Stack Data Science we continue our season 3, all about data science education, with a conversation with Reuven Lerner.

Reuven is a full-time Python trainer with a bachelor's degree in computer science and engineering from MIT, and a PhD in learning sciences from Northwestern University.

In 2020, Reuven published "Python Workout" a collection of Python exercises with extensive explanations, pub...

In this episode, David & Shaun talk to Lisa Carpenter. Lisa is the lead data science instructor at Digital Futures, with responsibility for the design and delivery of the Data Science programme. Prior to transitioning to teaching, Lisa gained over 10 years of experience in the data industry. Lisa is passionate about empowering people through digital skills and thoroughly enjoys seeing students grow their data careers.

Among man...

In this episode we bring you our talk from the recent Data Science Festival in London. Our talk was titled "Bridging the data science supply-demand gap" and it was all about topics that will be familiar to listeners. We tackled the question "how is it that there is an abundance of junior data scientists and open data science positions yet the job market is unsatisfactory for both sides"? A huge thank you to Data Science Festival fo...