Should you learn Python?
What is Python? Why is it so popular? In other words, what does it do that other programming languages don’t? Python is the world’s fastest-growing and most popular programming language. Many would also be surprised to know that Python is not just used amongst software engineers, but also amongst data analysts, scientists, accountants, networking engineers, and many other professions.
Python at its core is a very beginner-friendly programming language. So people from different disciplines use Python for a variety of different tasks, such as data analysis and visualization, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. Automation in fact is one of the big uses of Python amongst people who are not software developers. If you constantly have to do boring, repetitive tasks, such as copying files and folders around, renaming them, uploading them to a server, you can easily write a Python script to automate all that and save your time. And that’s just one example, if you continuously have to work with excel spreadsheets, PDFs, CS View files, download websites, and parse them, you can automate all that stuff with Python. So you don’t have to be a software developer to use Python and make your life easier.
Of course one of the biggest reasons people use Python is for the development of web, mobile, and desktop applications. So if Python can do what all the other programming languages can do when it comes to development, why all the Hype. Why is it so popular? Here are a few reasons. With Python, you can solve complex and dynamic problems in less time with the ability to solve them with fewer lines of code. For example, let’s say we want to extract the first four letters of the text Happy Coding. This is the code we have to write in JavaScript and then also how we do it in Python.
When defining variables in Python we simply write the name of the variable followed by an equal sign and the value assigned to the variable.
However, in JavaScript, we need to use the keywords of var or let before defining the variable.
These are very simple examples but they show just how easy and simple Python code can be. By using Python we are able to complete tasks with shorter and easier code. Python makes a lot of complex things really easy with a simple yet powerful syntax. But there are a lot of reasons why Python is so powerful.
First, it’s a high-level language so you don’t have to worry about complex tasks such as memory management. Second, it’s cross-platform which means you can build and run Python applications on Mac, Windows, and Linux. Third, it has a huge community of engineers who work daily with the language. So just like with other languages, whenever you are having issues or running it error after error, there is certainly someone out there to help. Lastly, it has a large ecosystem of libraries, frameworks, and tools. This allows you to do a lot because chances are someone has already done it. Surprisingly to a lot of people, Python has been around for over 20 years!
Everything you do with Python you can do with other programming languages, but where Python sticks out is in its simplicity which is the main reason for its unbelievable growth over the past few years. That’s why by no surprise it’s the number one language employers are looking for. So whether you’re a long-time programmer or an absolute beginner, learning Python opens up lots of job opportunities.
In fact, the average Python developer can earn well over 100k a year, which is why there’s never been a better time to master Python programming. So finally, get out there and get started! Happy coding everyone!
