alt Hacker News>but columns aren't the end-all-be-all normalization format. I think pandas uses "frames".
Pandas is column oriented, as are basically all high performance data libraries. Each column is a separate array of data. To get a "row" you take the n item from each of the arrays.
And FWIW, column-oriented isn't considered normalization. It's a physical optimization that can yield enormous performance advantages for some classes of problems, but can cause a performance nightmare for other problems.
Data analytics loves column-oriented. CRUD type stuff does not. And in the programming realm there are several options to have Structures of Arrays (SoA) instead of the classic Arrays of Structures (AoS).
makes sense, I guess I just meant that it isn't proper normalization without typing. you can have types in something like a sql db (or frames as you pointed out). But a simple CSV, not so much, you'll have to come up with a custom type scheme using headers or something. So long as arrays are strongly typed, I suppose a simple cell in a column is enough.