Python is not a new language really. It was developed about 30 years ago. It has gained lot of popularity in the last few years. Let us see why python is so popular these days as a programming language.
Python is an open-source high-level programming language. It is an object-oriented programming language which is designed specially to be simple to read and write. Python is not only simple to implement but also easy to learn. Python is a general-purpose language and is widely used for web and app development and also in analytics and data science.
- Easy to learn – Python is in high demand for its rich features and versatility. One of the top reasons that contribute to the wide usage of python is that it has a shallow learning curve. Python syntax is English like so it is easy to read and learn for first-time coders. It also allows developers to write complex codes in simple steps
- Community – Python is an open-source language. A mature and supportive python community is one of the reasons that has helped python to thrive and support its developers in the right direction. There are more than 1.5 million github communities and this makes it the second largest community on the platform. Python developers often organize meetups and have large network of developer community forums too.
- Flexible and Versatile – One of the appeals of working with python is that it is highly versatile as a programming language. Unlike JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, it can be used in applications other than web development. Python is used to build small as well as large tasks. Python is used to build any sort of application – website, web application, mobile apps to complex applications in analytics, machine learning and data science.
- Frameworks – Python has Django and flask frameworks for web application development that make client-side as well as server side functionalities easier to implement. It is being used in blockchain app development and gaming app development due to these strong frameworks and real-time testing.
- Libraries – Python has many rich and time-saving libraries. Numpy and pandas are libraries used for analytics and scientific computing. Matplotlib, Seaborn, ggplot, plotly are libraries used for charts and visualization. Scipy library is also used for engineering applications. For machine learning some of the libraries which are helpful are numpy, scipy, scikit-learn, theano, pytorch, keras, tensorflow etc.
- Internet protocols – Python’s standard library supports many Internet protocols: HTML and XML, JSON, E-mail processing, Support for FTP, IMAP, and other Internet protocols.
Some of the large organizations that make use of Python include Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo!, CERN, Youtube etc. Reddit, the social news networking site, is written in Python completely.