I'm a newbie to Python and gotta few questions like which version to start with Python 2 or 3 ?
Definitely Python 3. Python 2 is end-of-life in a little more than 13 months. Basically everything has been migrated to Python 3. There's no reason to learn Python 2 as newbie unless you have to explicitly maintain (and hopefully port) Python 2 code.
What are the real time applications?
Sorry, I think I misunderstood you earlier. I thought you were asking if Python can be used for real-time computing but by your questions below I think you meant real life applications.
Which tier this Programming Language is most advantageous/efficient?
Python is a general purpose language, which means you can use it for pretty much everything. Nowadays is very popular in web programming, data science or machine learning. You can use it for backend software, you can use it to build desktop GUIs, you can also use it to develop video games.
As all general purpose languages, you can do a lot.
Why to prefer this compared to other languages?
Well, that's a little bit subjective and a little bit objective. It's not a very complicated language to pickup. The official tutorial contains a lot of stuff and the standard library is solid, wide and battle tested. Is it better than other languages? Yes and no, depends on the context. Overall, including its quirks and faults, it's a good language to learn and still in demand in job offers.
I heard that this is a bit slow in it's execution but still gaining it's own level of importance
Python is not the fastest language but it's fast enough in most cases. Not that the intrinsic speed of a language isn't important (it is, see Go for example) but it depends in which context. It's also relatively easily extendable with C. It is probably used in way more companies that we know of. Among the famous ones I remember Industrial Light & Magic, YouTube was notably a Python shop in the beginning (don't know now), Google uses Python a lot and even employs/employed some of the core team, Instagram was probably the largest Django app in production a couple of years ago and maybe it still is, Spotify uses Python and C++ a lot, Quora started as a Python app, Dropbox's client is written in Python and the Python creator works there, and so on. Python is also used a lot in financial companies because it's really easy to interface it with numerical libraries written in C++.
So yeah, it can be slow in a pure benchmark but sometimes it's just fast enough (and one thing you'll learn is that sometimes speed issues don't strictly depend from the language you wrote your app in)
From a career point of view, how better we would get employed if we truly learn to the core?
Obviously the better you know Python, the better it is, but you don't need to know the Python C API by memory to find a job. Unless the job entails writing C modules for Python I guess :-)
Suggest any sites or tutorials to learn if you could.
Definitely Python 3. Python 2 is end-of-life in a little more than 13 months. Basically everything has been migrated to Python 3. There's no reason to learn Python 2 as newbie unless you have to explicitly maintain (and hopefully port) Python 2 code.
Sorry, I think I misunderstood you earlier. I thought you were asking if Python can be used for real-time computing but by your questions below I think you meant real life applications.
Python is a general purpose language, which means you can use it for pretty much everything. Nowadays is very popular in web programming, data science or machine learning. You can use it for backend software, you can use it to build desktop GUIs, you can also use it to develop video games.
As all general purpose languages, you can do a lot.
Well, that's a little bit subjective and a little bit objective. It's not a very complicated language to pickup. The official tutorial contains a lot of stuff and the standard library is solid, wide and battle tested. Is it better than other languages? Yes and no, depends on the context. Overall, including its quirks and faults, it's a good language to learn and still in demand in job offers.
Python is not the fastest language but it's fast enough in most cases. Not that the intrinsic speed of a language isn't important (it is, see Go for example) but it depends in which context. It's also relatively easily extendable with C. It is probably used in way more companies that we know of. Among the famous ones I remember Industrial Light & Magic, YouTube was notably a Python shop in the beginning (don't know now), Google uses Python a lot and even employs/employed some of the core team, Instagram was probably the largest Django app in production a couple of years ago and maybe it still is, Spotify uses Python and C++ a lot, Quora started as a Python app, Dropbox's client is written in Python and the Python creator works there, and so on. Python is also used a lot in financial companies because it's really easy to interface it with numerical libraries written in C++.
So yeah, it can be slow in a pure benchmark but sometimes it's just fast enough (and one thing you'll learn is that sometimes speed issues don't strictly depend from the language you wrote your app in)
Obviously the better you know Python, the better it is, but you don't need to know the Python C API by memory to find a job. Unless the job entails writing C modules for Python I guess :-)
I would start with the official tutorial, then I would read Dive into Python 3 and then I would start building some apps :-)
Thank you very much for this detailed explanation, very informative!!
You're welcome. Don't foget to have fun while learning!