What makes Python so popular

Pros and cons

But the strength of this language is not only in simple and understandable code, according to fuzzy wuzzy Python. It does not force you to specify the data type - you just need to declare a variable, and Python will "guess" from the context that it is: an integer, a floating point value, or something else. For a beginner in programming, this makes learning much easier.

In addition, it has a huge number of very different libraries - one of the consequences of the great popularity of the language, which is clear from the graph below. Pandas will help in analyzing big data, SciPy for technical calculations, NumPy for mathematical matrices, and so on. Scikit-Learn is popular in the now popular machine learning and neural networks, but the list of libraries of this language is much wider than the above.

Finally, a key plus: in comparison with conventional compiling languages ​​such as C ++, Python literally increases the productivity of the programmer by several times (source: Python). The number of characters in a typical Python program is 20-35 percent of the C ++ or Java code for a similar program. This means not only less keyboard input, but also that the developer will be able to spend as many times less time writing a program - and then spend three to five times less time debugging this program. This is the reason for the constant growth in popularity of the Python language, which today has become the most mentioned in various places.

Pros and cons

This is why Google uses Python in its search engine, and YouTube and BitTorrent are heavily based on the same language. And therefore it is widely used in NASA and the scientific world.

Of course, there are no free breakfasts. Less labor, including the division of data types, means that Python itself must take on functions that the programmer did not want to perform in advance. The program needs to reserve enough space for each variable for it to work regardless of its type. Using memory "with a margin" requires more work from the computer - and for the same tasks, Python programs are two to ten times slower than usual.

But in our time it is not critical: after all, this language is often used for narrow tasks (not at all for writing operating systems), and modern processors are very powerful. The end user will receive search results from Google not in 0.01, but in 0.1 seconds - and in practice they will not even notice the difference, since this is too short a period of time for him.

Pros and cons

Moreover, there is no shortage of computing power in the world today. The massive proliferation of powerful multi-core processors - both central and graphics - means that in the vast majority of cases, the speed of application execution does not play a significant role.

But the problem with the number of trained programmers is quite real - and here the "minus" of Python turns out to be its plus: longer program work allows you to write it much faster. This means that for a number of customers the program will have time to be written by a conscientious programmer, and not by a standard producer of "Hindu code". Alas, the latter are often the ones to blame for the vast majority of "glitches" like here encountered by specific users.