There are two kinds of Python on our beloved planet Earth. The first is a nonvenomous snake, the other is a programming language developed by Guido van Rossum. Python language has become very popular especially amongst tech newbies. For a programming language named after a snake, people certainly aren't scared of snakes. Or not! 🤷🏾♀️
HOW I STARTED USING PYTHON
Boredom led me to learn Python. It all started during the Covid-19 lockdown, I was bored and had absolutely nothing to do. Why not learn a valuable skill? And I chose programming. Python came readily to mind because it was easy. Since I'll be teaching myself programming, I might as well choose the easiest one. Down my tech road, I was love-struck by the language, here are a few reasons why I love Python.
Python is very versatile
The language cuts across almost every field of technology. It can be used for web development, mobile app development, data science (aka the sexiest job in the 21st century), machine learning, and even artificial intelligence. With Python, you can never go wrong. If you ever need to change carriers in tech, Python would give you a smooth transition
Example: Django framework is used for web development and Tensorflow is used for machine learning.
Easy Syntax
Python codes sometimes look like the English language. As long as you can read and understand English (no matter how little) you can understand Python. The easy syntax makes it beginner-friendly and lots of people are hopping on the bandwagon. It is also easier to set up, you don’t need to deal with any classpath problems like Java or compiler issues like C++.
Example: Print a word in Java:
System.out.print(“Hello World”);
Print a word in Python:
print(“Hello World”)
Community
Python boasts of a very large and helpful community. Since it is an open-source language, developers regularly assist newbies and contribute to enriching the language by developing new tools and libraries. If you ever get into trouble with anything at all, there’s a whole world of Python developers to catch you when you fall.
Example: The Python Package Index (PyPI) is a repository of software for the Python programming language. It has 285,805 projects, 2,342,231 and 480,706 users. That’s a whole lot.
Libraries
No other programming language can boast of as many libraries as Python. The language comes with the best libraries and frameworks for development. It has NumPy, Pandas, Selenium, Beautiful Soup and so much more. Almost any complex task you intend to carry out has a library to simplify it in Python.
Example: A framework in Python, Streamlit helps you create web apps in minutes. Pretty cool, yeah!
HOW YOU CAN START LEARNING:
Pretty easy, there are tons of Python resources. freeCodeCamp, Sololearn, and Programiz have free Python courses. Udemy and Udacity also have great courses but they come at a cost. Pick a course and stick with it, whatever you do just don’t get stuck in tutorial purgatory.
What could be better?
Python is an interpreted language which means code executes more slowly. This is because code is interpreted at runtime instead of being compiled to native code at compile time. Python is Dynamically Typed rather than Statically Typed. This also contributed to the slow speed. Overall, it still remains my favorite programming language.
Yeah! You made it to the end of the article. I hope this triggered your interest in the language and you like the language as much as I do (or even more).