Python is a high-level, interpreted, and general-purpose dynamic programming language that focuses on code readability. It generally has small programs when compared to Java and C. It was founded in 1991 by developer Guido Van Rossum. Python ranks among the most popular and fastest-growing languages in the world. Python is a powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use language. In addition, the python community is very active. It is used in many organizations as it supports multiple programming paradigms. It also performs automatic memory management.
Advantages:
- Presence of third-party modules
- Extensive support libraries(NumPy for numerical calculations, Pandas for data analytics, etc.)
- Open source and large active community base
- Versatile, Easy to read, learn and write
- User-friendly data structures
- High-level language
- Dynamically typed language(No need to mention data type based on the value assigned, it takes data type)
- Object-Oriented and Procedural Programming language
- Portable and Interactive
- Ideal for prototypes – provide more functionality with less coding
- Highly Efficient(Python’s clean object-oriented design provides enhanced process control, and the language is equipped with excellent text processing and integration capabilities, as well as its own unit testing framework, which makes it more efficient.)
- Internet of Things(IoT) Opportunities
- Interpreted Language
- Portable across Operating systems
Disadvantages:
- Performance: Python is an interpreted language, which means that it can be slower than compiled languages like C or Java. This can be an issue for performance-intensive tasks.
- Global Interpreter Lock: The Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) is a mechanism in Python that prevents multiple threads from executing Python code at once. This can limit the parallelism and concurrency of some applications.
- Memory consumption: Python can consume a lot of memory, especially when working with large datasets or running complex algorithms.
- Dynamically typed: Python is a dynamically typed language, which means that the types of variables can change at runtime. This can make it more difficult to catch errors and can lead to bugs.
- Packaging and versioning: Python has a large number of packages and libraries, which can sometimes lead to versioning issues and package conflicts.
- Lack of strictness: Python’s flexibility can sometimes be a double-edged sword. While it can be great for rapid development and prototyping, it can also lead to code that is difficult to read and maintain.
- Steep learning curve: While Python is generally considered to be a relatively easy language to learn, it can still have a steep learning curve for beginners, especially if they have no prior experience with programming.
Applications:
- GUI-based desktop applications
- Graphic design, image processing applications, Games, and Scientific/ computational Applications
- Web frameworks and applications
- Enterprise and Business applications
- Operating Systems
- Education
- Database Access
- Language Development
- Prototyping
- Software Development
- Data Science and Machine Learning
- Scripting
Organizations using Python :
- Google(Components of Google spider and Search Engine)
- Yahoo(Maps)
- YouTube
- Mozilla
- Dropbox
- Microsoft
- Cisco
- Spotify
- Quora