This story contains interviews with Michael Driscoll, CEO of Metamarkets; Paul Butler, data scientist at Chango and formerly at Facebook; and Niall O’Connor, vice president at Bank of America.

The big data frenzy continues. It’s permeating nearly every industry, flooding companies with more and more information, and making software dinosaurs such as Excel look more and more inept. Data crunching is no longer just for nerds, and the need for sophisticated analysis and powerful, real-time processing is greater than ever.

So what are the best tools to sift through gigantic data sets? We talked to data hackers about their favorite languages and tool kits for hardcore data analysis.

Check out the original article on Fast Company.