My list of favorite projects keeps changing with time, but at this moment, they are: Apache Arrow ( https://arrow.apache.org/ ), Polars ( https://www.pola.rs/ ) and  ADBC ( https://arrow.apache.org/docs/format/ADBC.html ) 

Apache Arrow provides a language independent columnar memory format thereby making most analytic operations more efficient. ADBC is an alternative to jdbc/odbc which simplifies the process of getting Arrow data in and out of different databases while avoiding unnecessary data conversions. Polars is a dataframe library that makes writing both readable and performant code easy. It also brings a lot of resource optimizations to the user without requiring the user to know many things. Together, I believe these and many similar projects are leading us all to more productive times.