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Kudzai Tsapo
Kudzai Tsapo

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Tale of the Snake Charmer: Why you should learn Python.

It has been several decades since a wise Sage went to the Amazon rain forest. After getting lost, he was found by the natives, who taught him how to speak their language. When he returned to his civilization, he decided to teach the machines how to speak the language.
Fast forward several decades later, Python is one of the most popular programming languages, being used for a variety of tasks which include but are not limited to Machine learning, web development, and mobile app development.
Fast forward a hundred years later,the robots are taking over the planet. There's wanton destruction everywhere, shopping malls are collapsing, and cars are being burnt. An old man peers from a glass office, watching all the events unfold. With tearful eyes, he sighs and says, "If only I hadn't built that damn model with Python!"

...

In case you hadn't noticed, I made up most of the events written up there. There's no moral of the story, if you're wondering.
So, what's the purpose of the article? Basically, it's to give advice to those who need it, and for those who don't, you can click the back button on your browser.

To be fair, Python is one of the awesome programming languages I've used. It's so easy to learn, compresses a lot of lines of code into a single line. It can also be used for a variety of tasks, from developing mobile apps, to web apps, to machine learning models.

Just like how there are huge fans of the language (e.g. me), there are also haters. They'll be quick to point out its flaws, but as far as you and I are concerned, they can go and f ... eh ... sleep.

So, why should you, an awesome person, learn this awesome language?

1. Because you can.

First rule of life, there are no rules ... eh ... apart from the laws of your country, laws of physics etc, but you get the point. Nothing restricts you from learning something, except if you don't want to. In fact, open your browser, download Python and get started right away!

2. You want to get into data science

One of the reasons why I love python, is the fact that we can prophesy the future using code! (I'm lying of course ... lol) What I mean to say is that, as human beings, we can notice repeating patterns, and try to predict when the next event is going to happen (Think the stock market, wanna try and predict when Tesla stock is going to fall, or rise?). We can come up with statistical models of these events, and Python makes it easy to do so. It has a snake-skin bag of libraries that you can use to achieve whatever goals you want in this field.

So, if you want to get into data science, you should learn python! There are no negotiations (unless you want to learn Matlab and R, in which case, be my guest).

3. AI will take over the world some day

When this happens, you'd want to cash out on it, right? You'll be one of the wizards who developed Skynet, and caused the apocalypse ... Just kidding! When flying, self-piloting cars and robots have been developed, wouldn't you like to puff out your chest with pride, and say, "I contributed one line of code to this future" ?

4. You want to be a tech billionaire?

Ah yes, one of the primary motivations of why people do anything at all! Money! 🤑 So, let's say, you've heard that it's now easy to become a billionaire. The person who told you this said you just had to create a web app, launch, and in a few years you'd be one. Well, I'm sure the person who would've said this would be joking, but jokes aside, using django, it is easy to develop prototypes and it cuts development time by like 50% (I might be lying but 🤷‍♂️). There's also flask, which is so light-weight, you'd wonder if it no bones will break upon deployment. Not forgetting FastAPI, which is awesome for developing APIs apparently (haven't used it much so I dunno).

Anyways, when you become the tech billionaire you've always wanted to be, don't forget to remember this article 🤣 .

So, the key take away points are:

  1. You're awesome
  2. Python is really awesome.

There are many reasons why people do things, and I don't know why you want to learn Python. However, I can safely say you're making the right decision 👍 , unless you're planning on taking over the earth with your droids, in which case no! It's a really bad idea!

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