Python is no doubt an amazing language. It was created by Guido Van Rossum in 1991.
Python is often referred to as a High-Level Programming Language, which leads us to our first question.
What is a high-level programming language?
To understand it we need to define abstraction first.
Abstraction is showing only essential features without showing any background details.
Example 1: An ATM machine does not show you how it will bring money from its backside. That is Abstraction. Only showing what is essential to the user.
Example 2: When you log in to Twitter or any other platform, it will not show you details of how your username and password are authenticated, what variables the algorithm is using internally to check it from the database. That is Abstraction. Only showing what is essential to the user.
So,
The language that uses multiple layers of abstraction is a High-Level Programming Language.
Python uses multiple layers of abstraction, as it is easy to read language. When you first write code in python you will see that all the keywords you use in your code are directly from the English dictionary and those keywords are working as same as their word meaning. Python will not show you how it is processing the code, most of the internal code will be hidden from the user.
That's High-Level Language.
Python support multiple programming paradigms
What's Programming Paradigm?
You can say that it is the category of programming. Here are some
- Imperative Programming
- Interpreted Programming
- Procedural Programming
- Object-Oriented Programming
And many more....!
These categories have different features and based on those features different languages are classified.
Why python is so loved by developers?
Well, there are so many features of python let's explore them.
- Easy to read and easy to write code
Python has an amazing way of using English vocabulary words to make it easy to read. It is also easy to understand the working of the code as the meaning of the word is exactly the working of the code.
- Standard Library and Community
Python has a broad standard library. Developers around the world build amazing modules and libraries that are just one command away from your computer. If you end up at errors there is a huge amount of dev community to help you solve the problem.
- Portable
What that means is, once you compile( Lower level representation of your code ) your code you can put it in any system and run it. It doesn't matter the system has python installed on it or not.
- Extensible
It means that python can be extended in any other language as well like C, C++, Java, etc.
- GUI Programming
GUI stands for Graphical User Interface, you can build GUI very easily using Python with Tkinter. It is used for Desktop Application Development.
- Dynamic Data Types
Python supports dynamic data types, what it means is that you don't have to declare variables with their type. Just name the variables and give them a value.
- Automatic Garbage Collection
Every program executes on RAM(Random Access Memory). Every time you run a script it will need space on RAM. To get RAM it requests to Operating System. The OS gives the program some space to run. When the execution is completed the program is to give the space back to the OS. This task is done by Garbage Collection. It will free the memory once the script is done running.
Who is using Python today?
Industrial Light and Magic
The company chose Python over Perl and Tcl. Using python for building software components and improving their standard graphics applications.
The website application of Instagram is built on Django, a web application framework of python.
The founders of google made this decision “Python where we can, C++ where we must.” What is mean by that is, C++ will be used where low latency was desired and Python will be used where maintenance and fast delivery are needed.
Netflix
Netflix is built on Flask, a web application micro-framework of python. It uses RESTful APIs to process alerts.
Government Agencies
NASA for scientific computing. CIA, FBI, ISRO, DRDO. All use python for task image processing.
What fields you can explore with python?
- Web Development
To develop websites or web applications you can use Python in the backend. Frameworks like Flask, Django can be used to build big and small projects.
- Machine Learning
How can you train a machine to perform like a human? To do that we can use a python framework like Scikit Learn which has predefined algorithms to work on.
- Deep Learning
How complex architectures can be built similarly to the human brain? Neural Networks can be build using the python framework Pytorch, Tensorflow, Keras, etc.
- Internet of things
How can we connect every non-living thing with the internet? Well, this can be done using python. Raspberry Pi supports python as its default language. Frameworks like Kaa, Zetta are used to implement IoT applications.
- Game Development
Games can be built using python frameworks like PyGame, PyKyra.
Final Point
I am using python for more than 5 years and have explored the above-mentioned fields. I have developed so many projects using python and its frameworks. It is fast to develop an application with Python. The maintenance is fast.
Happy Learning!