The Python programming language is now used more for data science than web development, according to a new survey.
The poll, conducted by the Python Foundation and JetBrains, involved over 20,000 Python developers from more than 150 different countries. It asked programmers what they use Python for the most.
‘At first glance, the results suggest that web development is a strong leader (27 percent), beating data analysis (17 percent) by a large margin’, the survey states. ‘But if we take a closer look, we see there has been growth with machine learning (11 percent). If we bundle data analysis and machine learning together into a single “Data science” category, this amounts to a leading 28 percent’.
The ascendancy of Python for data science is noteworthy given the healthy interest among developers in other science-focused languages like Julia and R.
In its January 2019 index of programming language popularity, TIOBE declared Python the language of the year for 2018 because it gained the most ranking points. The software biz says that C, C++ and Java consistently placed in the top three positions and now Python has joined them at the head of the pack.
‘It is the most frequently taught first language at universities nowadays, it is number one in the statistical domain, number one in AI programming, number one in scripting and number one in writing system tests’, TIOBE said. ‘Besides this, Python is also leading in web programming and scientific computing (just to name some other domains). In summary, Python is everywhere’.
Python is also more the main language of Python survey respondents (84 percent) than it was in 2017 (79 percent). Still, it's not an exclusive relationship; half of those using Python as their main language also report a dalliance with JavaScript. A recent HackerRank survey characterised JavaScript as the most popular programming language. Among those who say Python is a secondary language, the most common use for Python is DevOps-oriented tasks – system administration and writing automation scripts. Python has a long history as a "glue" language for connecting different systems.
The transition from Python 2, which is no longer actively developed, to Python 3 continues, with 84 percent of respondents saying they use v3 most. In the 2017 survey, that figure was 75 percent. Python 2 maintenance is scheduled to end next year. Companies that use Python have been making that change too. Dropbox, which is written mainly in Python, began the migration process in 2015 and last year said it had shifted over a million lines of code to Python 3.
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Thanks for reading
Mason
Taken from: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/02/07/python_becomes_data_sciences_squeeze/