Polars 2.0 makes streaming the default and gives SQL a bigger role

Polars says version 2.0 removes legacy decisions, makes its streaming engine the default and promotes SQL to a first-class part of Polars. It also adds initial out-of-core support, which spills data to disk, and a Map data type. The team says it thinks Polars is now among the fastest single-node analytical SQL engines. A separate post argues that AI coding agents write data-analysis code so quickly that execution, rather than “think time,” becomes the bottleneck.