From the course: Programming Foundations: Fundamentals

Why Python? - Python Tutorial

From the course: Programming Foundations: Fundamentals

Why Python?

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- When choosing the language for this course, I had two main requirements. It needed to be popular and easy to learn. As far as being popular, right now, the top five programming languages are Java, Python, JavaScript, C++ and C#. That narrowed down the list considerably. But when it comes to ease of learning, both Python and JavaScript have fewer Syntax requirements than the other languages, so let's look at those two. Both Python and JavaScript tend to be more concise. This means it takes fewer lines of code to get things done. They're also easier to understand, as both languages use structuring and wording that are closer to human language. But which one to choose? Well, JavaScript was designed to work with and manipulate webpages, and it continues to be widely used for that very reason, although, it can also be used for non-web applications. Python, on the other hand, was designed to be a general purpose language. You can use Python to create web apps, internal company tools, perform scientific analysis, as well as create games. The Python language has been around for decades, and it's available on multiple platforms including Mac, Windows, Linux and more. It's a great choice for exploring the various concepts that we're going to cover. So for this course, Python is the winner. We've already seen some Python code. Remember our simple, "Hello world!" program? That was written in Python. This is also Python code. Can you guess what it does? If not, that's okay. By the end of this course, not only will you know what it does, but you'll be able to write some of the programs yourself.

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