DEV Community: Julius Nyambok Nyerere The latest articles on DEV Community by Julius Nyambok Nyerere (@jnyambok). https://dev.to/jnyambok https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F2103598%2F120a1080-d408-4476-ba23-dec5d1cdeac1.png DEV Community: Julius Nyambok Nyerere https://dev.to/jnyambok en Why Your Data Pipeline Hates CSV - And what to use instead Julius Nyambok Nyerere Wed, 18 Mar 2026 15:42:48 +0000 https://dev.to/jnyambok/why-your-data-pipeline-hates-csv-and-what-to-use-instead-38p9 https://dev.to/jnyambok/why-your-data-pipeline-hates-csv-and-what-to-use-instead-38p9 <p>Using CSVs in production environments creates significant performance bottlenecks. While they are easy to use for small tasks, they lack schema enforcement and efficient compression.</p> <p>I have written an article titled "Why Your Data Pipeline Hates CSV - And what to use instead," a technical guide published by Towards Data Engineering that compares four superior alternatives for scalable pipelines:</p> <ol> <li>Parquet: Optimized for columnar storage and large-scale analytical queries.</li> <li>Avro: A row-based format designed for high-write streaming and Kafka pipelines.</li> <li>JSON: The standard format for semi-structured data and API interactions.</li> <li>ORC: A specialized columnar format for Hive and Hadoop ecosystems.</li> </ol> <p><a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fib3reswc043gmly5tjns.png" class="article-body-image-wrapper"><img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fib3reswc043gmly5tjns.png" alt=" " width="800" height="446"></a><br> <a href="https://medium.com/towards-data-engineering/why-your-data-pipeline-hates-csv-and-what-to-use-instead-418ea43ff8c5" rel="noopener noreferrer">Why Your Data Pipeline Hates CSV — And What to Use Instead</a></p> programming dataengineering computerscience data