Why Python?
This article is about part of Pluralsight’s Core Python: Big Picture course, I just finished it. For better fixation on the subjects presented, I decided to make a summary of the topics learned.
The Big Picture,
Python is a programming language that’s rapidly growing in popularity and being used in many ways across many industries. Python is simple to learn, it’s simple to use, it has a great community behind it, it’s widely used, and Python skills are in high demand.
Simple to learn
Python is a great programming language simple to learn because minimal computer knowledge is required to learn and use it. You don’t need to know the difference between computer memory and a hard drive, you don’t need to know what an operating system is, you don’t need to know what a compiler is, nor do you need to know about build systems, and you don’t need to learn any other programming languages first. Python is also built with the goal to be easy to read and understand. If something is easy to read, it’s also easy to understand.
Simple to use
There are several core tenets of the Python programming language that makes it simple to use. They provide guardrails that helped guide you to a likely solution. That simplicity translates to ease of use. If there are lots of knobs to turn, levers to pull, and buttons to push, it can be difficult to figure out how to use that device, but with a simplified and intuitive interface, what needs to be done becomes clear and more obvious. If something brings you joy, though, it increases your desire to continue using it. The Python community has come to embrace this principle when building Python features.
Great Community
A large contributing factor to Python being simple to learn and use is thanks to support from Python’s great community. The community involvement can be seen directly in how Python is supported and how Python is developed as a language. Python’s development is also conducted largely through community‑driven proposals called Python Enhancement Proposals, also known as PEPs. Outstanding proposals are reviewed and commented upon by the Python community.
High Demand
The ability to work with Python is a skill that’s increasing in demand in the industry. In even the recent past, when many developers thought of popular programming languages, they tended to think of Java, C#, C++, JavaScript, and perhaps even PHP. And according to PYPL, The PopularitY of Programming Language Index, Python is now the most popular programming language, with its popularity continuing to grow each year. Python has the highest spectrum rating according to the recent IEEE Spectrum report, and the TIOBE index now has Python in the top three programming languages worldwide.
All this to say, there’s really no longer any denying that Python is a popular programming language and a great language to invest your time into learning.
Widely used
Python has been used anywhere from special effects in movies like Star Wars to application scripting support in the popular open source, 3D modeling application, Blender. Four major areas I’ll highlight where Python has seen widespread use are web development, data science, education and learning, and scripting.
- The first area we’ll discuss where Python has seen growing use is in the area of web development. There are many different buckets or styles of web development. You might even be working with an out‑of‑the‑box content management system application, ERP application, or an application of a different flavor. And the same goes for full‑stack web development. You have popular frameworks like Django, TurboGears, web2py, and many others at your disposal. Basically, no matter what type of web application you’re developing, Python is being used out there today and can likely meet your needs too.
- Data Science is a field that is growing in popularity with each passing week. The amount of data being generated each day is growing rapidly and shows no signs of stopping. And Python is a popular programming language used in this space. It comes in all forms, shapes, and sizes. It may be a large amount of metadata available in pictures and videos, or it might be networks and graphs of relationships people have with each other. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack.
- Python is widely used in education and learning, and its popularity continues to grow in the field. Python is getting wider adoption as a language to use when teaching basic STEM (Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) skills to younger students across the world. It’s also being used as the first programming language in which to teach people programming in the first place. Python is being used as an educational tool to teach people more about computing hardware as well via accessible maker devices like the Raspberry Pi and the Micro:bit. Jupyter Notebooks have exploded in popularity lately and are pushing forward the concept of interactive education, especially in computer programming.
- One of the most common uses of scripting with Python is to perform the administration of computers when writing scripts to administer a machine, managing a series of log files, or examining and monitoring the file system and Python supports performing any of these tasks.
Thanks for reading. 🙏
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