Everyone Should Learn Python

If someone who wanted to learn a computer programming language asked me which one to learn, right now I would recommend Python. Back when dirt was new, dinosaurs roamed the earth, and I first started learning how to program a computer, BASIC was the language everyone learned. Then I moved onto Pascal before tackling C and C++. Nowadays I find that most of the coding I do is using Python and I love it.

I am currently working on a project where I need to display the size of a file on a web page. Most languages would require me to use IF..THEN logic show GB for gigabytes, MB for megabytes, or KB for  kilobytes. In Python, I just need to use the "filesizeformat" filter. It automatically converts the number 2600000000 into 2.4 GB (don't worry about it not being 2.6 GB as 1 KB = 1024 Bytes, not 1000).

Python is a very compact language and doesn't require a lot of coding to get a lot done. Chances are that someone has already figured out how to do something that used to require thousands of lines of code and reduced it to a single line in your program. The only problem with that is you need to know what line to use. That is an easy-enough problem to solve though. Just type a short description of what you are trying to do into your favorite search engine and you will get a number of suggestions. Most of the time one of them will work perfectly.

Python also has the advantage that is the computer programming language of choice for data science and data analytics, which is what I do a lot of. For a while, people used R but now Python has overtaken it.

Yes I still remember BASIC and Pascal really helped me understand a lot of fundamentals for computer programming. But if you are starting out on the path of learning your first programming language, my recommendation would be Python.