Why is everyone behind Python? 3 main Applications — Tharun Shiv

Tharun Shiv
4 min readJun 15, 2018

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Why is everyone behind Python? 3 main Applications

Python & It’s three main applications — Why is it used? — Where is it used?

If you have started learning Python or just Learned the programming language, you should have probably wondered “Where in the world should I use Python while there are other Programming Languages?” — Find out the answer.

Some reasons why Python is widely used,

  1. Python is Intepreted
  2. You need not compile Python Code
  3. Python is Interactive
  4. It has Support for Object Oriented Programming & Functional Programming too
  5. Readability at its heights
  6. Support of in-built libraries

Believe me, there are a lot of applications for Python, but here I outline three main Use Cases.

  1. Data Science
  2. Web Development
  3. Scripting & Other uses like GUI, Gaming and embedded systems.

1. Data Science

What in the world is Machine Learning?

First of all “What in the world is Machine Learning?” : Read About it here https://tharunshiv.ml/what-in-the-world-is-machine-learning-aka-ml/tharunshiv/

But why Python?

So there are lots of numerical computations . Though it seems like it could be implemented in any other language ( which is actually true ), doing the same in Python is easier. Why? The reason is that you have a lot of libraries ( pre-written set of codes which have functions and methods which could be used to write faster code with probably better space and time efficiency ) in python.

So you can apply the numerical concepts to

  1. Recommender Systems ( Netflix, Amazon, YouTube rules using this concept )
  2. The Google and Siri Digital Assistants
  3. The Face unlocking feature (though it may seem more of hardware oriented)
  4. Email Spam detection

and a book full of other applications ( literally )

What is the other cool thing about Python and Data Science?

You can plot colorful graphs. Yes, using libraries like matplotlib visualize data and continue with your further analysis. You can easily plot Pie Charts, Bar Charts, Line Chart, Normal Plots, Grouping & Clustering and lots of other Data Analysis stuff in less than 5 lines of code ( Only the Plotting ).

2. Web Development

This is probably the most exciting section for web Developers ( smile ). Yes, Python has two popular Web Frameworks called Django and Flask. Of course Web2Py for honourary mentions.

What are Django and Flask used for?

They are web frameworks which are used to write server-side code ( Backend ) using Python. If you do not understand what I mean, this just means that they are used to write the instructions which for instance verifies your Username and Password match by taking the input from you and searches the storage for the correct Password and compare the True Password and the entered Password ).

Now why can’t I use my own code for that?

Of course you may, but why do you wanna re-invent the wheel? These web frameworks make it easy to build common backend logics, communicate with the database, generate HTML files that users see on their browsers.

Django vs Flask

  • Django — If you have planned to build a mail service / blog / e-commerce website, where you have an admin interface.
  • Flask — If you build something creative and want more flexibility in each component you use. Easier to learn than Django.

3. Scripting and Others

Scripting here refers to writing programs that automate tasks. (mostly repetitive )

Lets look at examples,

  1. If you have a set of URLs which need to be opened at certain intervals, maybe to test the website. You can do that using small scripts in Python.
  2. If you want to filter the email containing certain keywords in their subjects, you can do that.
  3. If you want to automatically go through the web starting from a single web page automatically and collect only certain information form them and store them, Yes you can do that, called Web Scraping.
  4. You can use Python for embedded systems like the Raspberry Pi.
  5. You can use PyGame to develop games.
  6. You can build Desktop Applications using Tkinter, Python for GUI.

So these are the most Popular uses of Python and Probably the reasons why Python is popular today. Some of my views may differ from yours which is totally fine. At the end of the day, Every Language has its own purpose out there

Just take the pros and ignore the cons ( OR find replacements for it ).

If you liked the article, I’m sure you would like my Programming YouTube Channel too, You can find a link to it here. https://bit.ly/beingapro

Have a great Day Ahead!!

Originally published at https://tharunshiv.com on June 15, 2018.

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Tharun Shiv
Tharun Shiv

Written by Tharun Shiv

Site Reliability Engineer at PhonePe | Ubuntu Linux | Aerospike | RabbitMQ | Database | NGINX | Backend Engineering | Virtualization

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