Python as most popular programming language for first time in 20 years

“Python becomes the most popular programming language after 20 years of existing” as of October 2021. Why is this such a big deal? Python is a language that many people know or begin with when they start programming, so it comes as a surprise that it actually isn’t the most popular. Let’s dive into some history and use cases of Python and then look into its popularity and elaborate more on why it’s such as big deal.

Python history

Python’s official “creation” began in 1989 by Guido van Rossum, a Dutch programmer. It started of as a hobby project that he wanted to work on during Christmas to be busy. It was then developed in 1991 by Python Software Foundation. The name is inspired by the TV show “Monty Python” as Guido was a fan of the show and liked the short yet mysterious name. The language was designed with a lot of emphasis on syntax and code readability to allow programmers to develop what they wanted in relatively little amounts of code. Right from its release it already had complex language capability such as classes and inheritance, data types, exception handling and functions.

Use cases of python

In the past few years, the use cases for Python have skyrocketed, as it can be used in pretty much any field of programming:

• Data science: Probably the most popular use case, as Python is the go-to language for data science, due to the plethora of relevant libraries such as Pandas, NumPy, SciPy, Matplotlib and Seaborn
• Web development: Python allows the development of scalable web applications using frameworks such as Django and Flask
• Artificial intelligence and machine learning: Again, this is thanks to the wide range of libraries available such as Keras, TensorFlow and scikit-learn
• Game development: Suitable for game development on a low level as a programming language but also due to libraries such as PySoy and PyGame
• Internet of things: Python is suitable for using electronic devices for IoT purposes such as the Raspberry Pi

Why is it so popular?

Python is actually, on a low level, quite a slow language, nevertheless it makes developers most productive. Developers, especially those not on a professional level, simply don’t care that it’s slow on a low level. This also largely helps companies because using Python means developers can write code relatively quicker. This is also because there are many libraries and frameworks that have functionality you may need, meaning developers don’t usually need to build much functionality from scratch. Given all these factors, Python naturally has a very large community of people with many resources for learning. This reinforces the cycle of growing the community even further and it is therefore no surprise that Python has grown to a popularity of this size.

Why is it a big deal?

To conclude, Python being the top programming language after such a long time is almost a relief for many supporters of Python. Top languages such as Java tend to be hated for their complexity. JavaScript is hated due to it being so poorly designed and confusing. However, both of these languages were, and still are really anyways, at the top of the popularity list, but they usually discouraged many people from learning to code. However, now, the fact that it is so widely adopted means it allows more people to get quicker into coding to be able to work in the space, thus benefiting the tech industry as a whole.