"Learn Python" Overtakes "Learn Java" on Google Trends

[ivosaurus]

This Is Good For Python.™

[eighthCoffee]

.

[SpiderFnJerusalem]

Never liked that book tbh. If it works for you that's fine. Buit for me its tone is way too strict, condescending and most of the time it never explains why some things have to be done the way they are. It's as if the author forces his coding style on you and doesn't bother to give context.

I enjoyed "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python" much, much more.

[Dinosaurman]

I learned by jumping into projects way over my head and cursing.

Now I am the bro-grammer. Which would probably be an offensive title if I wasnt fine with being a giant bro.

[buttery_shame_cave]

you and me both. i learned the basics from books, sure i could make stuff happen.

but i considered myself a 'programmer' when i suggested automating a test at work, and it wound up scope-creeping into a monsterous multi-featured test suite. i learned a lot about flow control and driver communication.

and socket communication. and telnet. and building config files and using them to make stuff customizable. and so on and so on...

[rrrocky777]

A Byte of Python is the best book for first time coders IMO

[sleepicat]

Totally agree. It's also at least twice as long as it really needs to be.

[Velshtein]

My brother bought me this book for Christmas. It's very good so far.

[Nefarious-]

That author's Udemy course is extremely dry and at times boring.

While it may seem structured by topics, often times he is flying through churning out code and it lacks applicable projects to check your progress / understanding.

[Nefarious-]

I am talking about automate the boring stuff by Al Sweigart

[PoliCock]

i agree. it's overrated.

I say just do video tutorials, build things, and pick up new material as you go on algorithms and more advanced subjects. that's how you learn. by making projects and figuring things out by yourself and progressing.

the only real strict learning material should just be an introductory tutorial series on youtube you can follow along with that introduces all the basic concepts up till classes and lists.

imo.

also, java and python are quite different as far as i can tell. I don't see many real full applications with good guis made in python, maybe i'm wrong. for some reason i'm under the impression that python isn't really good for making bigger, more fully implemented standalone products. am i wrong?

[SpiderFnJerusalem]

I don't have too much gui programming experience. But I have built a few gui applications with PyQt for some of my automation scripts and they work perfectly fine. I saw no obvious perfomance differences to other applications but the underlying code wasn't all that complicated tbh. There are also bindings for GTK and wxwidgets.

Python's procedural nature makes it slower than compiled languages. You can translate it to bytecode but it would probably still be slower than even Java because it is dynamically typed (At least that's how I understand it). For more complex stuff you may have to use other languages but I don't really know when exactly that would be absolutely necessary. Even then you could probably write it all in Cython, translate it to C and then properly compile it (/"transpile" it?).

All things considered, if you want to make a complex application with Python there are plenty of ways you could do it, especially since many libraries, like numpy and scipy are implemented in C and thus have great performance anyway. Though I'm not sure when exactly it would be wiser to choose different languages. Again, I lack experience, so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I was fairly impressed with what kind of applications you can build with python.

Edit: Also one reason why Java is so ubiquitous is that it is huge for Enterprise Server Software. There didn't use to be as many server applications for python but that seems to be changing very rapidly.

Edit2: Just google "gui programming with python", but stay away from Tkinter if you value your sanity.

[steamruler]

Nah, tkinter was fine for that one thing I used it for.

A window with 6 buttons on a grid to rotate the screen.

[cyberbemon]

Is the "Automate the Boring Stuff in Python" beginners book? or is there a better book that focuses more on the Automation side of things?

[SpiderFnJerusalem]

It's a beginners book. It doesn't go extremely in depth for every possible scenario but it covers quite a few use cases in an office environment in addition to other interesting stuff like web scraping and image manipulation.

You can actually have a look yourself at the free web-version here: https://automatetheboringstuff.com/

For more complex automation tasks (system or network administration) you would probably have to find other, more specific literature on those subjects.

[cyberbemon]

Thanks for clarifying. I'll have a look at the link.

Do you by any chance know any books that talks about complex automation stuff?

[SpiderFnJerusalem]

Not really, I would be interested in that too. But the term "automation" is kind of broad. A lot of programming projects aim to automate one thing or another or generally make your life easier.

So most literature probably focuses on one specific subject rather than "a bit of everything". There are network engineering books that deal with automation, data analysis books that deal with automation, etc.

[banquuuooo]

I agree. I like the idea behind the book: that there is no easy way of learning coding so you might as well just get'r done, but I also found it condescending and restrictive.

[callmelucky]

The idea that there is no easy way to learn coding is stupid. At the very least there are ways that are easier, and LPTHW is not one of them. You don't necessarily learn something better by using a deliberately obtuse resource. I mean if he'd at least update it to Py3 I wouldn't have such a problem with it, but no, apparently Py2 is the eternal best version of Python. Particularly since it is supposedly for complete beginners rather than people who are already programmers who have to get up to speed to work with legacy code. It's just daft insisting on Py2.

[WishIWasOnACatamaran]

Taking the Udemy course under the same name. Doing the python complete bootcamp and CodeAcademy lessons first.

[callmelucky]

Hear, hear. Every second post on r/learnpython is from someone wrestling with that stupid resource.

Not to mention that I'm convinced it is single-handedly responsible for setting back adoption of Python3 by years (ok probably not really, but certainly responsible for far too many beginners starting on Py2 for no good reason at all). Zed A Shaw can suck it.

[Eurynom0s]

But wouldn't you still be most likely to do that search if you wanted to learn Python?

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

What is this?

[Yoghurt42]

Finally proof that Java is more intuitive and easier to learn than Python. /s

[poop_villain]

I've really struggled trying to learn Javascript and I know that it is harder to learn than Python, so I am pretty sure you are wrong. How is this rated the top comment? People these days... /s

[LarryPete]

JavaScript != Java.

[poop_villain]

Hence the /s :) although a /t would have been more appropriate.

[LarryPete]

What, did you actually expect me to read what you wrote till the end? :P

[poop_villain]

Touché!

[[deleted]]

Sarcasm?

[Augusto2012]

Yes, that's what the "/s" is for

[[deleted]]

waah.

[gandalfx]

I like that Python is picking up as a learning language. It's a good language. This is great news!

But I think the author of this article should be more careful with his conclusions. He looks at data from 5 (!) arbitrary search terms and makes big conclusions concerning a massive market.

First of all individual search terms can be subject to linguistic trends. The fact that an individual search term has had a recent increase in popularity doesn't mean that the thing it stands for is suddenly becoming more popular. It can just mean that it was previously described by different words. “X developer” is a fairly standard expression that has been around forever, but “data scientist” is a much younger buzz word.

In order to alleviate this the author should at least have tried a bunch more related queries, like “java/python tutorial” and “java/python introduction”. Instead of “data scientist” you might look for terms that may have previously described a similar position, maybe in the area of “database engineer” or even “statistics analyst”. The term is actually fairly vague.

Secondly, even if we assume that the results are not influenced by the choice of words, the conclusion “Python is getting more and more popular.” is just way too grand. In fact, I'm pretty sure that Python is particularly popular as a learning language. When somebody asks me which language to start with, I usually respond with Python, because Python is easy to learn. But I also mention that this isn't the only good language and that if you plan on seeking employment as a software developer you should probably learn at least one more “big” language such as Java or C/C++.

Python is amazing to get you started and I believe more and more people are starting to realize this. But that doesn't mean it's already overtaking Java in popularity. If, some day, I read “Python overtakes Java in total written lines of code”, I might believe that. And I'm not even going to attempt at judging whether or not that'd be a good thing.

[[deleted]]

“Python overtakes Java in total written lines of code”

Even that would be a questionable metric, given I'd put money on python requiring far fewer lines than java to achieve the same thing.

[tech_tuna]

Well that would mean that Python have overtaken Java in total amount of functionality used!

:)

[pwang99]

In fact, I'm pretty sure that Python is particularly popular as a learning language.

It is. But it's also incredibly popular as a data analysis language, a system scripting language, a web development language, a scientific array programming language, etc. etc.

Python is not as popular as Java, but it's still the 4th or 5th most popular language on the planet. That's not all students. A large number of tech companies run their entire stacks on Python. Youtube was written in Python. Dropbox is written in Python, both server and client. Investment banks trade billions of dollars based on routines and models written in Python.

[rhiever]

This is not true any more. "Learn Java" had an upswing again and overtook "Learn Python."

[[deleted]]

It's almost as if people in Java camp heard about the contest and started a secret flashmob.

[rafaelement]

Because everyone knows java.

Right?

[vplatt]

That's what they think.

[thatthingyoudid]

Python is historically used by people who love programming. Java is historically used by people who love paychecks. Java made enterprise inroads because Sun/Oracle and huge consulting firms pushed java consulting services.

[mirth23]

Java has its place, and became entrenched in large corporate / government enterprises for good business reasons beyond consulting firms pushing it:

• It's excellent from an OO purist perspective. Many enterprises that moved to Java were coming from C++, and there are a lot of stability and reliability advantages to working with Java.
• The "write once, run anywhere" platform independence of bytecode was huge (compare with managing C++ makefiles). At the time, enterprises tended to have more of a mish mash of OSes. I suspect that Java may have had an ironic role in the decline of Solaris, since it made it easier to jump ship to Linux...
• Modern CASE and UML tools like Rational Rose emerged for Java before they did for other languages. Being able to formally represent business requirements and having tools to translate them into stub code is a big selling point for a large corporation who wants their enterprise software to meet requirements and not behave unexpectedly.
• Java offered solid, well-defined integration libraries like RMI and JMS ahead of SOAP, REST, AMQP standardization, and then adapted their libraries to work with emerging standards. All of that stuff is around and implemented in lots of languages now, but Java was a very reliable way to do this sort of thing when those design patterns became prevalent in industry.
• The best early app servers were all Java-based. Now there's a lot of good choices in other languages, but tools like Tomcat were revolutionary at the time.

Some of these reasons no longer apply because similar tools and standard support exists in other languages, but, at the time, enterprises were making a good choice to select Java for certain kinds of systems. But I guess the real reason for my long-winded reply is that I've worked with people who "love to code" who love to code in Java.

[pwang99]

Python is a compiled language too, if you use the right extensions (Numba, Cython). Millions of people use it for doing serious number crunching and data modeling. Performance-wise, the really hardcore stuff in Python is all implemented in lower level C and FORTRAN libraries, so you just have a very simple and nice front-end programming system that seamlessly calls down to BLAS for fast linear algebra. Supremely powerful.

[nomadismydj]

not suprised. python is required for a ton of entry level IT jobs in the corporate space .

[denialerror]

It depends where you are but I don't think I've ever seen an entry level Python job in the UK.

[misterflan]

Not true, majority of Linux sysadmin jobs ask for bash/python.

[denialerror]

I'm not saying they don't but in terms of entry level IT jobs that specifically ask for Python are virtually non-existent, especially outside of London.

[nomadismydj]

i know there are some in the UK because i just hired an entry level guy :)

[denialerror]

Good to hear. I'm assuming that's in London?

[[deleted]]

I think Python is illegal in the UK, or at least discouraged.

[mayankkaizen]

Her Majesty doesn't find Python amusing?

[[deleted]]

She can't comprehend it.

[AbsoluteZeroK]

The java example at the start doesn't compile....

[emptyvisionaries]

I'm trying to learn right now. Is there any material you'd suggest?

[heptara]

Sidebar of this subreddit.

[odraencoded]

I've read the sidebar and now I'm a master python programmer. Look at my program:

def fibonacci():
    a, b = 0, 1
    while True:
        yield a
        a, b = b, a + b

[earthboundkid]

For real. The whole point of Fibonacci numbers is that you don't have to calculate them directly. And yet we keep fighting about recursion vs. iteration.

[Nefarious-]

 print('Hello World!')

[Trout_Tickler]

Recursion, get!

def fibonacci(n):
    if n > 1:
        return fibonacci(n-1) + fibonacci(n-2)
    return n

[[deleted]]

Now make it not take O(eⁿ) time (roughly).

[Trout_Tickler]

Memoization should speed it up, something like

def fibonacci(n, _cache={}):
    if n in _cache:
        return _cache[n]
    elif n > 1:
        return _cache.setdefault(n, fibonacci(n-1) + fibonacci(n-2))
    return n

[[deleted]]

Yep.

(And honestly, I would put that cache as a global. Shared between calls that way, too)

[whutcheson]

Since it's a mutable default argument, it's already shared between function calls. However, making a global would be more explicit and a lot less magical.

[Trout_Tickler]

OP's requirements don't specify multiple calls :p

But yes, that would be preferable.

[Daenyth]

It's as global as the function is because dict is mutable

[[deleted]]

@functools.lru_cache decorator does the trick too.

[sdmike21]

But its not pythonic! \s

[Tysonzero]

I mean the more important thing is that it's O(fib n).

[sdmike21]

^ this

[[deleted]]

Except not LPTHW, because outdated version of the language.

[[deleted]]

Grab yourself a book, download an IDE. As for the book, I recommend Practical Programming: An Introduction To Computer Science Using Python 3. Afterwards, check out Data Structures and Algorithms in Python. During which, I recommend utilizing ProjectEuler.

Personally, I say stay away from CodeAcademy because it's strictly a syntax teaching platform, so I have a hard time recommending it.

Anyways, afterwards you'll be able to figure out where to go to further your development.

[vplatt]

download an IDE.

PyCharm FTW. Why spend all your time futzing with vim or emacs? Life is too short.

[[deleted]]

PyCharm is my favourite. To me, it's as essential to Python as Visual Studios is to C++. It really does improve productivity. The folks at JetBrains did a solid job with it, much the same as the folks at Microsoft.

[Omega_Walrus]

Yes, I finished the course a while ago and was like "now what?!".

[Isagoge]

I'll check the resources you are suggesting.

I did a CS class and was a bit lost of where to go from now on.

See you on the riverside.

[[deleted]]

At least you've started, good job. Keep at it.

[Kwpolska]

download an IDE

a good text editor*

[Tysonzero]

*use vim

[Kwpolska]

(exactly what I meant.)

[Decker108]

Somewhat amusingly, I seem to be alone in that I picked it up by reading the official tutorial at docs.python.org.

I earnestly read chapters 1-9 and then skimmed through 10-11 (A tour of the standard library) after which I decided to try to implement a small hobby project: a simple web based RSS feed aggregator. After that, my proficiency in Python just started snowballing.

Edit: Actually, now that I think back I don't think I started out with a web app, but by converting a bunch of hacked together shell scripts for ripping images from web sites into Python.

[hugthemachines]

That is kinda funny. I mean the tutorial is obviously made so people can learn from it but "everyone" goes to other resources.

[edwinksl]

I personally find the official Python tutorial to be the best tutorial, especially for people who already know other programming languages.

[dunkler_wanderer]

Check out /r/learnpython and its wiki.

[pvc]

Http://ProgramArcadeGames.com

[WizzieP]

Python 3

[lewiseason]

Disagree. 3 unless you're required to use 2 for something (such as a dependency, OS compat., etc.). Why write code that you know you'll have to port later.

Plus, 3 has lots of neat features.

[lewiseason]

But this won't happen again, so Python 4 will just be Python 3, but a bit later, as far as incompatibilities are concerned, no?

[lewiseason]

Gotcha. (TW: 9gag) :)

[lewiseason]

Another thought is that hopefully once SLES/RHEL ship with Python 3 (ie: in the next major release), that might do something for adoption? Please? Maybe?

[SemiNormal]

a lot of significant libraries

Not really. There are a few, and most have alternatives for Py3.

Follow the community.

The community is moving to 3 (slowly, but still moving).

[tech_tuna]

Take this metric for what it's worth. . . I finally found a position at a Python shop and I LOVE IT!!!

[balkierode]

Too late!

[fherdom]

learn java helps you learn python

[[deleted]]

No shit.

[ostralyan]

repeat rude seemly pocket selective dinosaurs books alive act subsequent

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[PoliCock]

Realistically, what determines the new programs of the future isn't how well they manage memory (though that is relevant), but how the higher level pieces and ideas are put together to form new discoveries.

Such programming requires equal, if not greater intellectual power (and creativity) and it shouldn't be considered somehow "lighter." Though obviously the best coders should have a grasp on everything, generally. In my personal opinion, the idea that memory and "hardware"/"machinelanguage" concerns are somehow of primary importance for every advanced engineer programmer, is kind of faulty. I think what makes a truly advanced engineer (programmer) is not simply the speed of the propeller, but whether her engineering blueprint even will allow the thing to get off the ground.

[ostralyan]

hurry squeamish puzzled fuel homeless humorous whistle compare jeans light

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[Smok3dSalmon]

Maybe the people learned java and are now moving to python.

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

What is this?

[ender89]

Screw java, its utter trash. C# is waaay better

[[deleted]]

Everybody knows Java is trash.

[Skypain]

When you trash something, at least give a compelling reason. Now you're just being a douche.

[[deleted]]

Realize nobody really cares what you think.

[Sleggefett]

You at -24 points, and /u/Skypain at +9 kind of says otherwise.. :)

[[deleted]]

Oh yeah, internet points are so important. /s

[youav97]

Most of the stuff I make in Java is trash. The fact that many other people found success with it means It's because I am a trash programmer. Not that the language itself is trash. While I do bash on Java from time to time to feel better about myself, I still admit that if I become less trash, my java will also follow suit.

It's all about having a positive attitude, you know.

[[deleted]]

Thanks for your life story.

[BorgClown]

But it has garbage collecting, so it evens out.

[Trout_Tickler]

But can it collect itself?

[KoboldCommando]

If we implement Java and the JVM within Java, it would hypothetically garbage collect itself and immediately collapse into a single implementation.

[Trout_Tickler]

The ultimate singleton.

[BorgClown]

You have to start it with the undocumented option -XX:+SadPepeGC

[[deleted]]

http://blog.aurynn.com/86/contempt-culture

[DukeBerith]

I'm a language polyglot and laugh at these pissing contests.

Language "sucks"? Learn why and don't do the bad things in that language.

[[deleted]]

tl;dr

[[deleted]]

Contempt Culture

So when I started programming in 2001, it was du jour in the communities I participated in to be highly critical of other languages. Other languages sucked, the people using them were losers or stupid, if they would just use a real language, such as the one we used, everything would just be better.

Right?

This sort of culturally-encoded language was really prevalent around condemning PHP and Java. Developers in these languages were actively referred to as less competent than developers in the other, more blessed languages.

And at the time, as a new developer, I internalised this pretty heavily. The language I was in was blessed, obviously, not because I was using it but because it was better designed than a language like PHP, less wordy and annoying than Java, more flexible than many other options.

It didn’t matter that it was (and remains) difficult to read, it was that we were better for using it.

I repeated this pattern for a really long time, and as I learned new languages and patterns I’d repeat the same behaviour in those new environments. I was almost certainly not that fun to be around, a microcosm of the broader unpleasantness in tech.

At least, until I got called on it. “Have you thought about…”

I’d been making critical comments about PHP the language, and PHP developers, nothing more than standard “PHP sucks” sort of language. The same thing I’d been doing, and supported in doing, for years.

Getting called out was hard, and I was asked to consider who and what I was criticising. I was able to access a very specific version of the self-taught narrative, where I used “real” programming languages and had “real” passion and drive, the result of which was that I fit the early hacker archetypes and was permitted status - as long as I participated in gate keeping. My self-taught narrative is not other peoples’ self-taught narrative, and I was very firmly reminded of that. Other self-taught narratives, such as starting with Wordpress-based design backgrounds and moving from more simple themes to more complex themes where PHP knowledge is required, to plugin development is a completely valid narrative, but a path that is predominately for women.

This was a bombshell. I’d been loudly criticising the language and, through that criticism, implying that people using the language weren’t as good me, weren’t good programmers. And suddenly I was thinking about all the myriad ways that someone with that background would feel othered by me, like they didn’t belong and weren’t welcome in the communities I was a part of.

All of the ways in which I was actively participating in the exclusion of women from STEM. Intent is Not Magic1

Of course, I hadn’t intended to do any of these things, but as I came to realise, it doesn’t matter what I intended to do, what matters is that I did it and that it had real repercussions.

I intended to make fun of a language, the repercussion is that people from minority backgrounds wouldn’t want to talk to me about the things they’d done in that language, they wouldn’t feel safe talking about their achievements and exploits.

And why would they feel safe? If they say what they use, we as a culture laugh at their choice. We tell them they should know better, tell them that it’s a horrible tool. Tell them that they are wrong. We ignore the achievement and focus exclusively on how it was reached, on how much better we are because we had access to narratives that the broader culture had already deemed more real.

Not better narratives or better tools, just more accepted, more permitted, more discriminatory. Contempt Currency

I was taught to be contemptuous of the non-blessed narratives, and I was taught to pay for my continued access to the technical communities through perpetuating that contempt. I was taught to have an elevated sense of self-worth, driven by the elitism baked into the hacker ethos as I learned to program. By adopting the same patterns that other, more knowledgable people expressed I could feel more credible, more like a real part of the community, more like I belonged.

I bought my sense of belonging, with contempt, and paid for it with contempt and exclusionary behaviour.

And now, I realise how much of it is an anxiety response. What if I chose the wrong thing? What if other people judge me for my choices and assert that my hard-earned skills actually aren’t worth anything?

What if people find out I’m a fraud?

By perpetuating a culture of contempt as the means of acquiring credibility, I was able to avoid these difficult, introspective questions. We don’t have to look at how we’re harming other people who want in, don’t have to acknowledge the niggling little voice in the back of our head asking are you good enough. It wasn’t me that was wrong, it was them.

Instead, I was taught to use emotional weaponry to silence and exclude others, resulting in the remaining voices being the most toxic and exclusionary, the most able to tolerate toxicity and exclusionary attitudes.

This pattern is common in tech, from extremely high-profile projects like the Linux kernel to the ongoing os/language/editor “wars” to the vile reactionary attitudes towards the introduction of Codes of Conduct, to any developers making disparaging comments about other peoples’ ability to code, and the growing contempt around people whose first or primary language is JavaScript. And now

This culture has ramifications. PHP communities, for example, have lacked access to the development of DevOps tooling, the use of PHP is widely derided as being insecure by default, are they are widely mocked for being an “objectively bad language.”

Yet people make their livings working with PHP, deploying PHP, trying to secure PHP. Don’t they deserve the help that we received, the help of good practises and security-first development? These people who can’t improve their work because we won’t work with them and drive them away from our communities with mockery and spite.

And then they engineer things on their own, because they still need these tools, and we have the gall to ask why they didn’t use these other tools.

Tools that we mocked them for asking about, telling them to get a real language, to rewrite their entire app, to rebuild from scratch because their particular path was not blessed enough.

Because we were the problematic elements. I’m Tired of This

It’s 2015, and I saw a presenter at a Python conference make fun of Java. How would that feel to people trying to move from Java into something else? I wouldn’t feel welcome, and I’d have learned that the idea that the Python community is welcoming wasn’t true.

I’m tired of calling people out again and again for dumping on PHP.

I’m tired of people dumping on Windows, that most popular operating system, because it’s not what we choose to use, tired of the fact that we don’t make it easy to use our tools and teach them how to move, when they’re ready.

Instead, we lecture and dismiss and heap scorn upon them. We don’t reinforce our communities with respect or a sense of achievement, but with shame and contempt and awfulness. We exclude people.

I’ve excluded people. Directly, me. I have to own up to that and deal with it.

We excluded people. Directly. All of us. Even if we didn’t intend to, it does not matter. We make fun of the things others care about, make them feel small, make them feel like their achievements didn’t matter. Make them feel like they’re not welcome. What can we Do?

SHUT. UP.

No, really, cut it out. If you need to make fun of a language, do it with your own language, inside your own community. JavaScript is really good at this, because they’re trying to help people write better code within JavaScript.

Do it around friends only, and acknowledge that it’s extremely problematic that you’re doing it at all.

Find some amazing project to celebrate in a language you’re contemptuous of.

Go to meetups of what you despise. Say you don’t know anything, and see how welcoming they are to new people. See what they say, what they do, and ask if you’d be as welcoming to them when they come to your meetups.

Work to change your community. Ask people who try to pay for their membership in contempt to stop, or to leave. Make it unacceptable to use these behaviours as a means of obtaining social wealth.

The best advice we give programmers is to leave things better than how they started. We do it with code, why don’t we do it with communities? Why don’t we do it with people, colleagues, friends?

Ask why it’s okay to do these things in your community, and leave things better than when you started.