When you speak with researchers, data scientists, and practitioners who are involved in any capacity with data, you are bound to here one word multiple times in a conversation: Python.
It is understandable that the data science world has migrated to the Python programming language, and the shift cannot be more clear. Reported this week by The Economist, Python has officially become the world’s most popular programming language. That’s not all. Languages such as Lisp, which popular sites such as Reddit have switched, indicate a further decline of non-Pythonic languages.
Python has built itself to be extremely extensible, with inter-operable packages for language support with Java, C, and R. Reticulated python offers integration between the R and Python programming languages. Jython - Python for Java has been around since 2009 as well as Cython - Python for C.
Python is not only for data scientists who code each and every day. Today, python can control your in-home smart device (I.e., Amazon Alexa and Google Home).
Alexa’s SDK supports Python development for Skills, which means Echo devices are machine learning ready for implementation today. Google Home’s actions support python development as well.
If trends would indicate, Apple HomePod and Facebook Portal would move to build their developer ecosystems to a Python direction as well, to maximize developer evangelism and support.
Although there are a myriad of reasons why Python is continuing to gain traction, perhaps including the readability of a programming language, one thing remains certain: If you are going to learn one programming language in 2018, let it be Python.