<story><title>Ask HN: Was data science just hype?</title><text>I don&amp;#x27;t hear a lot about &amp;quot;data science&amp;quot; anymore. And judging from the shrinking number of job postings, I suspect it was a bit overhyped a few years ago. What do you think?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>lame88</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a lot of hype in software. Just like you were hearing about Blockchain startups only when Bitcoin started trading at 5 bazillion USD and now you don&amp;#x27;t hear nearly as much about it.  During 2008-2015ish we went through an insane churn of new JavaScript frameworks and NoSQL database hype.&lt;p&gt;Yeah it seems to have calmed, but I don&amp;#x27;t think data science was &lt;i&gt;just&lt;/i&gt; hype because it comes from (and somewhat is) probability and statistics, and the rate of data&amp;#x2F;information that&amp;#x27;s being produced by and extracted from people seems to be ever increasing.  But it absolutely was prone to a hype cycle as with almost anything else in tech. IMO this is a phenomenon exacerbated by venture capital.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wayoutthere</author><text>Most of what we call “data science” is repackaged “data mining” — a skill that goes easily back to the mid-90s. Sure, open source tooling makes it all a lot more accessible today; but IBM &amp;#x2F; Oracle &amp;#x2F; etc. have offered similar packages (at MUCH higher price points, of course) for decades.&lt;p&gt;I think once the hype calmed down, people started to realize that it was largely the same old shit in a much cheaper package — evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Ultimately I think the hype cycle was driven by Moore’s Law more than anything; the fact you could run this type of analysis in a manageable amount of time without needing a huge IBM mainframe was the real innovation.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Was data science just hype?</title><text>I don&amp;#x27;t hear a lot about &amp;quot;data science&amp;quot; anymore. And judging from the shrinking number of job postings, I suspect it was a bit overhyped a few years ago. What do you think?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>lame88</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a lot of hype in software. Just like you were hearing about Blockchain startups only when Bitcoin started trading at 5 bazillion USD and now you don&amp;#x27;t hear nearly as much about it.  During 2008-2015ish we went through an insane churn of new JavaScript frameworks and NoSQL database hype.&lt;p&gt;Yeah it seems to have calmed, but I don&amp;#x27;t think data science was &lt;i&gt;just&lt;/i&gt; hype because it comes from (and somewhat is) probability and statistics, and the rate of data&amp;#x2F;information that&amp;#x27;s being produced by and extracted from people seems to be ever increasing.  But it absolutely was prone to a hype cycle as with almost anything else in tech. IMO this is a phenomenon exacerbated by venture capital.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nemild</author><text>That hype in software is the reason I wrote a media literacy guide for software engineers. Hype makes it easy to get free marketing and also drives clicks for media and social networks.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;nemild&amp;#x2F;hack-the-media&amp;#x2F;blob&amp;#x2F;master&amp;#x2F;software-engineers-media-guide.md&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;nemild&amp;#x2F;hack-the-media&amp;#x2F;blob&amp;#x2F;master&amp;#x2F;softwar...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>