Object-oriented programming and techniques (OOP) such as using classes and inheritance are common in many application programming environments but alas don’t “travel well” outside computer memory. The potentially intricate relationships of objects (both the data they hold and the meaning and possible uses of the data) are not easy to transfer (except of-course by full replication of code and data). Hence when considering data science tasks and objectives that involving exchange of data, the transition from object hierarchies that live inside memory, to data structures that can be exchanged with another computer is not straightforward. In this new short course we explore how some popular programming languages, data formats, database API’s and web frameworks handle hierarchical classes.
Incidentally, we have also wrapped up the GSOC 2021 mentoring project and a blog post summarizes developments.