Python is one of the most demanded programming languages in the IT industry today. According to a StackOverflow survey, Python is the most preferred language. It is super easy to get started with and therefore more and more people are switching to it. It is widely used in data science, machine learning, deep learning, etc. Not only this, but it is also used for backend, system administration, automating scripts, network programming, scraping, web development, and the list is endless. Python is probably everywhere and a recent survey from JetBrains states that 85% of the python developers use it as their main language as opposed to 15% who use it as a secondary language. It is such a powerful language and more and more developers that have proficiency in Python are being hired with high pay packages.
There are a lot of skills that python developers need to be fluent with as they come in handy during interviews, work, or even while learning new skills on top of python. In this article, we will look at the top skills that you, like a python developer, should possess.
1. Excellent Debugging Skills
Python is a beginner-friendly language and is said to be easy to start with. But there are a lot of scenarios where you expect to get a different output or result rather than the one you have got. Some of these cases can be when working with range() function (which results in off-by-one error), failing to close a file, division by a negative number (often resulting in an undesired number that rounds towards the negative part of the number line), etc. This makes the skill of debugging important to have. Some ways to debug are by simply printing out variables values, altering the path of the program, stopping execution of certain events, and using a debugger.
2. Knowledge of Frameworks
Web frameworks in Python like Flask, Django, Bottle have been popular since their initial days and have grown to a great extent in recent years. More and more web developers are now switching to these frameworks due to the sophisticated nature, ease and pace of build, security, and Scalability these frameworks offer. Other popular python frameworks include web2py, Falcon, Dash, CherryPy, etc.
3. List Comprehension and Slicing
Slicing and list comprehension is one of the most powerful features that are present in Python. Slicing is applied to strings and lists and is responsible to carve out a part or subset of the list or string. It prevents you to loop through indices with ugly if conditions and makes the code look elegant. On the other hand, list comprehension is a mechanism to create a new list based on an existing list or other structures like strings. This shortens multiple lines of the loop into a single-line and easy-to-understand syntax.
Read more about it – List comprehension and Slicing in Python
4. Usage of Common Python Libraries
Libraries in Python are what makes this language so powerful. Thousands of developers have made numerous libraries to carry out a lot of procedures that will make the development process for other developers much faster, smoother and secure. These libraries contain useful functions that eliminate the need to write code from scratch. Some of the famous libraries are Tensorflow for machine learning, PyTorch for computer vision and natural language processing, Requests for HTTP requests, and many more.
5. Usage of Python Shell
Python provides a robust shell of its own that lets you execute commands in isolation and entirety. It is also called the REPL (read, evaluate, print, loop) which means it reads the command, evaluates it, prints the result, and loops back. The shell is a text-based command prompt. It lets you test code without explicitly creating a file. As a python developer, you should know how to use this python interpreter as it can save a lot of time while testing out new pieces of code.
6. Familiar with ORM Libraries
Object Relational Mapper is a class of library that assists in converting and transferring data from the relational database into python objects that are suitable to use in the application itself. Some examples of ORM in python are TortoiseORM, Django ORM which comes inbuilt with Django framework, and SQLAlchemy which is mostly used with Flask. These are much more efficient than SQL and help you save a lot of time by offering the freedom to choose any other database while developing.
7. Core Python Concepts
Core python concepts are the concepts that lay a stepping stone for your journey in python. You should have mastered a few concepts like data structures, exceptional handling, object-oriented programming (OOPs), multithreading, packages, functions, upgrading versions, generators, iterators, etc. These help you to be a powerful python programmer with a strong base.
Read more about it – Python OOPs
8. Readable Code With Proper Documentation
Since python depends on spaces or tabs (and not primarily depends on braces like other languages), there can be scenarios where there could be bugs in the code therefore it is required to maintain code in a readable format to make debugging easier. Also, sometimes python codes could be complex to understand therefore proper documentation should accompany the code to make it more readable.
9. Data Related Skills
Python is said to be the most used language while dealing with data-related technologies and domains like data mining, data analysis, machine learning, data science, big data, and more. So if you plan to learn python, learning a few of these skills will enhance your resume and would allow you to sit for more diverse roles. As python supports most of the data-related tasks by providing libraries, beginning with these technologies is not as hard and would showcase you as a great python developer.
Read more about it – Machine Learning in Python
10. Usage of Files
Coding in python needs a lot of interaction with files. Either you are working with data in data-related domains, or you are storing some results in a file, file I/O or file handling is a crucial part of python related development and therefore one needs to know how to work with files in python.
Read more about it – File handling in Python
We have looked at the most useful and important skills you need to have as a python developer. Learning and practicing these will help you land a job and make you a desirable python developer.
