Why Python is the language everyone should learn

In #articles

I have been a fan of the Python programming language for many years. It was encouraging to me lately that there are two articles about Python, reiterating many of my experiences, and teaching me some things I was unaware of. The first, about myths about Python and its use in large-scale applications, was a real eye-opener. I've never had to scale my apps up, or have high security, so I had implicitly bought into the two myths that Python was not suited for the job. Nice to know I was wrong!

The other, about someone's programming journey away from C and Java to Python, mirrored my own experience somewhat. For me, it was coming off of Matlab, and finding that I could do all of what Matlab offered and much more. At one time, I rewrote Matlab, Perl, Sed, Awk, and Jed scripts all in Python - being able to think in one language as opposed to five was a huge boon to productivity.

In my experience, Python is the easiest language for a beginner to learn, and it is one of the most powerful languages I've ever worked with. I've been able to get a few of my colleagues hooked on Python over the years, and have yet to find a problem for which it is not well suited. Even this website is written in Python!