I got asked on Twitter why I love Python so much, and I thought I would do a quick writeup, then open this up to a discussion on why your preferred language is your go-to.
Python was my first programming language, and it made me fall in love with writing code in the first place. I was able to write games and helpful scripts with very little programming experience. I also started my software engineering career with writing Python code for data science scripting. I'm not sure that my career would exist without the Python programming language, to be totally honest.
Python's syntax is so similar to written English. Its guiding principles are outlined in The Zen of Python, which is a poem that all programmers should take into account (I even named my blog after it and have it hanging on the wall in my apartment. Four lines in particular really speak to me:
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Readability counts.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
I think those guidelines make the language easy to understand and write code with.
I also really appreciate how diverse the use cases are for it. Django makes creating web apps straightforward and extendible. Pandas makes data manipulation a breeze, and the data science libraries are unparalleled. It's also great for solving code challenges because of the utilities in the standard library. IPython notebooks are awesome for teaching and creating shareable and accessible code.
Some other notable features include:
- list comprehensions, which are a really elegant way of transforming data
- you can extend Python relatively easily with C or C++ which you can use to write faster-running utilities if needed
- meaningful whitespace: I'm going to indent my code anyways, I should get something in return for that!
- a great and supportive community behind the language
So, what is your go-to programming language and why?
Note: There are a lot of programming languages I have written code in, and I like a lot of them as well. Python is just the language that I do code challenges with. Also, totally understand that different languages are good for different things. This isn't meant to be a debate, just a display of love for languages that have been helpful for us!
Latest comments (117)
My go-to language would be Ruby. I've been a Rubyist for a long time after coming from PHP. It pays the bills aside from being a fun language to code in.
I've recently been doing a lot of front-end development professionally with ReactJS. JavaScript is probably on the top of my list as well.
I like JS. Have an idea? Just open the browsers console and see the result. It's that's simple for me.
I think its more of a "python forces me to indent code"
C# for everything
My goto is
It's probably because I been burnt a fair bit of enterprise workspace. It may not always be the best tool for the best job. But it always can get it done.
It also saved me many times over - unable to get approval to install Redis / Memcache without admin?. I will toss over and execute a less performant, but working jar file instead.
Similar stories on bash scripts written to execute certain actions in the background.
And that familiarity, reliability, and speed of which I can work on them, make them my goto.
It also makes them one of my most hated languages of all times. Along with every quirk and design decision in the language, I wish was removed and never made.
So I guess all is fair from there.
I go with Html.
No i'm just kidding.
I love c++ and to be honest I would try to do anything there. Right now I'm learning socket programming with it.
But professionally I am a MEAN Stack developer and do a lot with typescript.
I don't have a particular go-to as I don't consider myself a bonafide developer. Nor am I a dedicated designer. I'm somewhere in the purgatory that lives between the two. I mostly work in HTML/CSS and some JS due to my job. Most client work I use PHP, but mostly because I can use includes for my HTML and its the only other language I used other than HTML/CSS. So I guess my goto language(s) are PHP/HTML/CSS ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Ruby when I need to write something quickly.
PHP when I need it to go fast, especially when dealing with files.
C++ tends to be my go-to language for technical interviews as it was what I was trained in academically and what I studied as I prepped to enter the job market. For writing full scale applications C# has become my go-to simply because I use it everyday and it's most familiar to me on a "bigger than a single algorithm" scale at this point.
On a side note, I'm taking some online courses in Python and loving its simplicity so far!
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