• Question: what is python and how do you use it

    Asked by keen519wren to Paul S, manuelalidiagrindei, Kirsty R, JoB, Edward on 14 Apr 2025.
    • Photo: Paul Stallard

      Paul Stallard answered on 14 Apr 2025:

      Python is a popular programming language. We need programming languages to tell computers what we want them to do. There are other programming languages that you might have heard of like C++, Javascript, go, rust, and lots more. I’ve had to learn lots of programming languages throughout my career – the principles are the same so it’s quite easy to learn new ones. If you to start coding, it doesn’t really matter which language you start with – just have fun!

      As just one example, we use Python to build machine learning models that give personal content recommendations to our users (in a video streaming app).

Comments

  • Photo: aureliabrzezowska

    aureliabrzezowska commented on :

    Python is a programming language that is high-level (closer to English than binary) and usually interpreted (translated to computer commands line by line when it is run rather than in one go! It is quite unique as it supports multiple paradigms (ways of programming) including functional (like Scala), procedural (like C) and object oriented (like C#). Python is a little slower when it comes to execution time but is preferred by many due to how easily readable it is and easy to learn. It has many, many brilliant libraries (pre-compiled, tested and efficient code that you can run with a couple commands) that make writing code easy! It is commonly used for data analysis, recently AI and machine learning, blockchain, automating processes and so much more.

    I highly recommend it as your first programming language!