Introduction¶
About Python¶
You may be asking yourself why you should learn Python. There are many programming languages from C and C++ to Java, Lua and Go.
Python has become very widely used and one of the reasons might be that it runs on many different platforms, from IoT devices to common operating systems to supercomputers. It can be used well for developing small applications and fast prototypes. In the process, there are countless software libraries to make your work easier.
Python is a modern programming language developed by Guido van Rossum in the 1990s.
See also
The Origins of Python by Lambert Meertens
Some strengths of Python are
- ease of use
Some of the reasons for this are that types are associated with objects, not variables; a variable can be assigned values of any type and a list can contain objects of different types. Also, the syntax rules are very simple and you can quickly learn to write useful code.
- Expressive power
Often you can achieve much more in a few lines of code than in other languages. As a result, you can complete your projects more quickly, and debugging and maintenance are also much easier.
- Readability
The easy readability of Python code simplifies debugging and maintenance. One of the ways Python achieves this is by requiring indentation.
- Completeness
With the installation of Python, everything essential needed for programming with Python is already available, emails, websites, databases, without the need to install additional libraries.
- Platform independence
Python runs on many platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux etc /et cetera). There are even variants that run on Java (Jython) and .NET (IronPython).
- Open Source
You can download Python and use it freely for developing commercial or private applications. Python is used and promoted by many established companies, including Google, Meta and Bloomberg. And if you want to give something back, you are also welcome to do so : Python Software Foundation Sponsorship
Python has some advantages, but no language is the best solution in all areas. For example, Python performs less well in the following areas:
- Speed
Python is not a fully compiled language and code is first compiled into bytecode before being executed by the Python interpreter. While there are some tasks, such as string parsing with regular expressions, for which Python provides efficient implementations, and which are as fast as a C program, Python programs will still be slower than C programs in most cases. However, this rarely plays a decisive role, since there are already many Python modules that use C internally.
See also
- Diverse libraries
Python already has a lot of libraries, but in some cases you will only find suitable libraries in other languages. For most problems that need to be solved programmatically, however, Python’s library support is excellent.
- Variable types
Unlike in many other languages, variables are not containers, but rather labels that refer to various objects: Integers, strings, class instances and more. Some find it a disadvantage that Python does not simply perform type validation here, but the number of type errors is usually manageable and the flexibility of dynamic typing usually outweighs the problems.
- Support for mobile devices
Even though mobile devices have proliferated in recent years, Python does not have a strong presence in this area. While there are a few options to deploy and run Python on mobile devices, this is not always easy.
- Support for concurrent computation
Processors with multiple cores are now widespread and lead to significant performance gains in many areas. However, the standard implementation of Python is not designed to use multiple cores.