Apache Arrow
Apache Arrow is an open-source, cross-language development platform for in-memory data that specifies a standardized, language-independent columnar memory format for flat and hierarchical data. It enables efficient data interchange and processing between systems, eliminating serialization overhead and supporting high-performance analytics. Arrow provides libraries in multiple programming languages (e.g., C++, Java, Python, R) to work with this format seamlessly.
Developers should learn Apache Arrow when building data-intensive applications that require fast data exchange between different tools or languages, such as in big data analytics, machine learning pipelines, or database systems. It is particularly useful for scenarios involving columnar data processing, where performance gains from zero-copy reads and vectorized operations are critical, such as in Apache Spark, pandas, or GPU-accelerated computations.