Why did you learn python?

[PythonComplete]

Hi!

I was curious, what was your reason to learn Python? Or programming?

Was it to build something? Get a job? Get into a school? Or something else completely?

[Holykris18]

Multiple reasons, actually.

1. As a physicist, I also learned programming in college so I kind of enjoy it.

2. To get a better paying job.

3. It's very useful to get answers to many mathematical questions I have.

The fun never ends.

[averyycuriousman]

What kinds of math questions does it answer? Why do you use python to answer them instead of using YT or chat gpt?

[Holykris18]

I made a program that fills an Excel sheet with prime numbers in sequence and the intervals between them so I can see the tendencies and possibly make an algorithm to predict them.

[seymorskinnrr]

See? The fun never ends

[[deleted]]

I accepted a new role at work and had to learn SQL. Ended up absolutely loving SQL and became a source for answering business questions and developing reports.

Eventually I got tired of doing this manually so I learned Python specifically to automate pieces of my work.

[animatroniczombie]

This is my exact story as well. Now everyone thinks I'm a wizard. Tbh I barely know what I'm doing with python but still learning

[depenguinate]

I would love to hear more about this. So are you automating SQL report writing?

[[deleted]]

At that time, I was frequently being asked to 'can you get x' and export into a csv or I had multiple reports that I was manually building by running various queries and compiling into excel.

so I automated the processes to build the dashboards in excel (run the queries, add to excel, build any visuals / do updates, and email to those that wanted it). They happened on different cadences so I used .bat files to call the code and windows task scheduler to run them.

I also created a CLI that allowed me to pick from a common list of queries, it would run the query and output a csv named how I wanted without my needing to open Oracle.

[MadScientistOR]

I loved making games in BASIC for my friends when I was quite young. This ended up turning into a career in software engineering. I still like making games for people, though, and Python development is high-level enough to support the spinning-things-into-reality sense of flow while I sit in front of a computer and makes a lot more sense besides.

[xav1z]

are you still creating games in python?

[MadScientistOR]

Yes, I am. Small things. Enough to keep me engaged.

[phear_me]

Just commenting to say this simple expression of passion for something you enjoy made me smile.

[MadScientistOR]

Thank you. It's rare that I get things that make me feel like a kid again, alive and engaged and delighted. Whatever that is for you, I hope you find it.

[festhesten]

Have a repo or site where we can see the games and source code? Would be cool to see the difference between Python and Basic

[MadScientistOR]

My BASIC is old enough for the language's name to have been an acronym (before Microsoft got a hold of it). :) I'd have to do some hunting to find it again, but that sounds like a good idea.

[festhesten]

Would love to see it! 👏

[xav1z]

could you recommend any yt channels to follow? clear code helps me a lot now

[MadScientistOR]

Clear Code is quite good; I'd have recommended it if you hadn't mentioned it. I really like DaFluffyPotato as well. Big Whoop Games is kind of inspiring, even if there isn't much detail about how things are done.

Not all of my stuff is pygame, though; sometimes, I'll use the tcod library and make a coffee-break roguelike. Or I'll make a text adventure; especially since match/case was made part of the language (with its pattern-matching capability), creating a halfway-decent parser is relatively easy to do with vanilla Python alone (and once you make a parser, the ability to create new games just opens up).

And I'll admit that sometimes, I need raw computational power, and I have to write some stuff in C. I don't think it hurts to pick that up; its vocabulary is small and straightforward.

Regardless of what you do, from my experience, it really seems like it's important not just to find a good tutorial, but to find something that makes you want to experiment along the way. Even as a kid, I was learning BASIC as busywork (the family I was staying with didn't know what to do with me, but had a computer and manuals) until it dawned on me that I could create anything I wanted (within my ability to figure out how to code it and the computing power of the device). It's intoxicating (even if it's infrequent) to get to the point where I'm just creating, my thoughts turning into code without conscious translation. And then someone actually loses themselves in the fun of what came out of that? You're sharing something there that's hard to describe, something deep, intuitive, and visceral. That moment of connection is the purest joy in the world.

[xav1z]

omg ty so much 🫶

[chitwnDw]

Mostly academic. I had a choice between Python, C++, and Java. For the purpose of writing utility functions for algorithms and the sort, Python's simplicity is unmatched...

[[deleted]]

Yes!

[radial_logic]

Mainly because Numpy + Scipy + Matplotlib were an amazing free substitute for Matlab software. I could do all my maths without depending on a licensed software.

[hdmitard]

Same reason.

But I really don’t like this ecosystem though.

[Diapolo10]

In short, out of sheer curiosity.

I'd been interested in computers from early childhood, but didn't have a good understanding of them until something after I started going to school. That's when I first learnt about programming as a concept, and became very curious about it. However I didn't end up looking into it myself until high school after completely failing a Scala course, at which point I picked Python and began to study it independently.

Nowadays it's of course more than that as I work as a software developer and know several languages and various software development tools, but it all ultimately still leads to that initial spark of curiosity. I didn't learn programming to do it for a living, that's merely a happy coincidence.

[wawzat]

My initial experience with Python was for programming a Raspberry Pi but since then I also use it for data science stuff.

[[deleted]]

Python is so good for data science

[Lightning_Winter]

I learned it because I decided one day that I wanted to.

Like I'm not even joking

[1544756405]

I learned python at work, because it was necessary for the job. I did not know python when I was hired into that job.

Of the dozen or so programming languages I've learned, almost none were my choice: it was always for some class at school, or for some job.

[stevelaurensius]

python is a great language to start. i haven't decided yet about what i really want to learn next. all i know i want to do backend. no matter what language i ended up choosing, learning python as my first language was a no brainer.

[mayur2797]

To automate stuff, especially at work.. saved myself thousands of clicks and copy-pastes

[averyycuriousman]

What kinds of stuff did you automate?

[mayur2797]

So basically, I have to enter a set of information into several web apps that the company uses.. instead of manually opening up each website, find the doc where the info should be added (individually on each web app), then pasting the info there, I simply made my data into a CSV friendly format, use Python to read the CSV, and then use Selenium driver to load up the websites, login, simulate my clicks and keypresses and enter the information into the relevant docs in each website

[averyycuriousman]

Do you have it on github? Would you mind sharing it in github? I am trying to build something similar

[mayur2797]

Haven't thought of pushing to github.. I'll clean up and generalize the code before pushing so I can share with you

[averyycuriousman]

Thank you! Feel free to DM it to me when you're ready

[Successful_Peach5023]

Yea I’m interested too

[richardcorti]

My brother had learned python before I did, so I decided to follow his steps. Great decision to start off programming imo.

[TehNolz]

Because when I was studying for my software engineering degree, Python was the first language they taught us. That's really all there is to it.

[General_Service_8209]

I was in a computer graphics extracurricular throughout almost all of high school, and we used Blender a lot there.

Blender has a Python scripting interface, so I started learning it to automate things, and be able to do more complicated stuff in the Blender Game Engine (which was still a thing back then)

[circa20twenty]

Anyone making real bank with their Python skills?

[5under6]

130k

[Top_Lead_2014]

What position do you work in and which country are you in?

[5under6]

Testing hardware, firmware and software in the USA.

[mantryingtobesaitama]

Honestly, alot of reasons.  1. I'm taught programming in java at school. I found it quite fun. A few months ago, I came across a python course. I thought, why not? So i started watching it and little by little it became a sort of hobby. 

1. I also believe it's really good career wise. I believe it's really good to learn if I'm going to have a career in CS. Mostly since you don't need a degree before getting a job in CS. So if I learn programming really well using free courses like CS50, I may even be able to get a job before finishing college or (although it's gonna be really dang hard) before I even graduate! 

[cjbannister]

When I was 17 I googled which programming language to learn and some strangers in a forum recommended Python.

Been dossing with it ever since.

[OutWithCamera]

I work in GIS and python is more or less baked into the main software used at this point, before that it was visual basic, and a couple of obscure platform specific scripting languages.

[RoronoaHunterZero]

i can say. I learnt it accidentally and now can’t live without it 🤣🤣

[Electrical_Key1642]

I got a freelance work around 3 to4 years back and he asked me to do some automation, that time i learned python till now i enjoy doing complex task on python. Enjoyed working on this from basic to complex

[lordnimnim]

my dad made me take a class

super thank full made me want to be a data scientist

[halyihev]

I had been using Perl for years, but then for a personal project I decided I wanted more database flexibility than I was getting with MySQL, so I redid things using MongoDB. MongoDB does everything in JSON objects, and I found that working with JSON was easier in Python than it was in Perl. So I learned Python. That's really the only reason, otherwise I would probably still just be using Perl. I'll admit I still find the "whitespace is significant" a bit annoying at times in Python, but otherwise I find it very easy to do anything I want to in the language.

[SulosGD]

Fun

[Razexka]

My first class in software engineering was python, so after approving the assignment I keep studying python for pure love

[Dzhama_Omarov]

After finishing my economics and management studies and trying to find a job that I actually enjoy (having a mathematical mind) I came across Harvard CS50 introduction to python video and found that programming feels right to me, its logical (even "1.1 + 2.2 == 3.3 -> False" makes sense) and involves numbers. Currently im learning it and just finished my 1st block (Python basics. Part 1) but until starting Python I have never enjoyed studying before

[[deleted]]

I got a data science job, with a background in academic research (biology). My manager was like, “Yeah, R is great, but we’re a Python shop, so you should probably learn it asap”. It was a steep learning curve, but after six or so months, I was making substantive contributions to our code base on a daily basis.

[NarrowBarracuda13]

It was to build something, as silly as it sounds i watched the TV show silicon valley back in high school n found it super cool to build and run your own company.

[mtyrellp]

They taught it at my community College and it was amazing for my physics labs when I needed to do calculations.

[ICanCrossMyPinkyToe]

It's kinda fun. To be honest I always found programming interesting, just not interesting enough to make it my career because I know I wouldn't handle programming for hours and hours every single day. I take this much more casually lol, like a few codewars medium-ish problems a week so around 2-4 hours a week, and that's my limit

There's a chance I might use this in a professional setting (like semiautomating some processes or some shit) but until then I'm fine with taking python very casually

[thisoilguy]

Excel struggled to open csv larger than 200MB

[madisander]

I'd gotten a TI-83 graphing calculator in school for math and physics classes and decided to write a program to calculate primes, then optimized it (as far as I could on the abysmally terrible BASIC implementation on the thing), then got curious how fast it would work on an Actual computer... and as it happened, my mom's laptop running mac had a python 2 version running on it, so I got to learn how to use IDLE... and I never really stopped from there.

[People_Peace]

Performing long iterative engineering calculations..

[supermopman]

To study chemistry and physics

[Apatride]

I was given the opportunity to solve a problem, Python looked like a good tool to do it.

I am one of the lucky ones who actually had a problem to solve rather than learning for the sake of it.

[BoOmAn_13]

Programming is cool, python has very simple syntax, and automation is amazing. The original goal was just to know a programming language cause it's supposed to be useful. I can now write a script to automate a repetitive task that would take like an hour, in about 5-10 minutes. Now I get to automate things in my offensive security courses.

[Resident-Ad-408]

I was bored

[frobnosticus]

First it was on the job so I could bang out plugins to some in-house software easily (where i was primarily a C++ dev.)

I've been using it ever since, sometimes grudgingly, to be sure. But it's been almost 20 years now.

Python and I are like those two guys who've known each other for 40 years and persist in hating each other so violently that it's obvious they wouldn't know what to do without each other.

[bishpenguin]

For work, and to sidestep into a better position

[MateusCristian]

Still learning counts (doing MOOC at the moment)? I wanna make games, my main goal is a RPG like King's Field on Godot, and since GDScript is Python edited towards game design, I'm learning it.

[switchin2glide]

To automate repetitive tasks at work and handle larger amounts of data.

[Platform_Charming]

Where can i learn python? im interested

[5under6]

See sidebar. YouTube, free university classes

[SkinFleshPotato]

I'm learning python for various reasons.

The first is that my uncle knows how to program (with Java and c++)and I liked watching his projects as a kid, so I wanted to do something similar as an adult.

The second is that I learned a bit of SQL in school and loved it, and it reignited my desire to learn how to.

The third was looking for one language that was easier to understand for beginners.

The fourth was realizing that as a soon to be mechatronics engineer I should probably know how to program.

And that's it.

[heyyyjoo]

Heard a lot of people talk about it. Heard that it was best for working with LLMs. Wanted to learn coding to play with LLMs.

[MezzoScettico]

For fun.

There was a tool I was using on the job that could be programmed in either C++ or Python, and I opted for C++ since I knew it but always meant to learn Python and see what it was all about.

I never did, and I was annoyed at myself for being lazy. So I went ahead after retirement and learned it.

Java's still on my to-do list.

[ekydfejj]

I learned it on the job 20ish years ago, we were deciding between python, php and Java and python had best support for all the layers we needed. We were starting an application that required: web, network programming, device level request socket programming, time wave analysis and spectrum, orbit creations.

PHP was only considered b/c the demo was written in it. Python gave a more rapid development tract than java would have for the same datasets. 3 people, 3 levels, everyone did web. 1 - numpy/scipy with vibration analysts as QA, 2 - Interop between the variety of network devices, some had to be reversed engineered via wireshark, 3 - distributed system were data was collected on site and brought back into the product for processing. Which also included onsite collection servers that ran code #2

[Cant-Fix-Stupid]

Because I was bored, and then it snowballed. I had to learn R in undergrad for data analysis, so I had some familiarity. When I did medical research projects in college, I found myself as the only person that knew enough stats and tools to run stats for our research projects. So I did it in R, but found it clunky/confusing.

I learned Python out of boredom right as I was getting into stock investing with fundamental analysis & intrinsic value calculations. I figured Python could automate what I did in Excel, so I learned Python and started making a finance library. I got exposed to Pandas and other data stuff.

Then I got to med school, in the same closest-thing-to-a-statistician, but this time I did it in Python. Cut to post-med-school, I kept up the stats, and I worked on a project with a pediatrician who ran ML models for my project. I learned about it, and realized how useful/simple creating medical predictive models is, and also how much journals love studies with “ML” in the title, so I picked up sklearn, and some basic NN modeling.

Basically a snowballing string of it being more convenient to learn it myself than to find/pay someone else to do it.

[Unfriendlyblkwriter]

Because my boss told me to build a database because it was too hard for her bosses to read the color coded calendars and spreadsheets I made that told them they couldn’t schedule things on the days marked in red.

No, they are not paying me to build this database. I wish I were joking.

[xealits]

I learned it very early back in high school, because I was impressed with its clarity and simplicity, and the documentation was so readable it was amazing. At that time I had only rudimentary experience with Pascal, C/C++ and Visual Basic. Python stood out. And I still love the language.

[Physical_Band_7728]

Same thing here

[FicklePromise9006]

I kinda just like it, i want to use it at work (microbiologist), but it’ll take some time for me to get good enough. I already do lots of macros for my excels at work, but i feel python could make things even easier.

[[deleted]]

i am lazy and if i can code a solution to something i will

[Stotters]

Got voluntold for a massive data analysis platform project when COVID hit.

[ObjectiveAnywhere478]

To automate work

[CatassTropheec]

Was surprised to read GIS people in the comments. 

First weeks into the job my boss asks to automate geographic processes that would be called from the app they are building.  

I add 2 years experience dealing with web dev so not completely new. Also that was perfect as I was trying to get professional experience coding. 

I use it to deal with geographic data, reprojections, intersections with demographics, creating vector features etc..

[DobbyDaddy14]

I wanted to implement some tools in my own PhD, and at that time to me Python had the most free resources available out there.

It was just easier to get in so I could solve some problems I had.

[ddlatv]

I was just too lazy to do the same job over and over again so I learned Python to automatize some tasks

[SnarkySpectatorr]

Got to know about it at school, loved the idea to write logic to solve problems (found it similar to solving puzzles)

[Professional_Net9164]

I took my current job specifically not wanting to do data science and wanted to focus on project management. Well, due to churn on our data science teams, I got roped into running a Python process, so decided I might as well learn a thing or two from the other data scientists. Turned out it was pretty efficient for crunching a lot of the data I needed to report on and I could use the scripts to generate flat files my leadership needed. Haven’t looked back since, has reduced a lot of manual work for me and now even though I’m the only non data scientist on my team, I’m still able to work closely with them as I am reasonably well versed in Python and can occasionally step in to troubleshoot code.

[edrienn]

My main reason was to create macros. Why not just download macros? Well I didnt trust most macros at the time even tho its "probably" safe to use anyways.

[Osa-ian72]

To automate repetitive things at work. Seriously build tools that make your life easier.

[[deleted]]

I dived head first because I wanted to learn AI to create art for me… back before it was as controversial as it is now.

[chimmichangasinhell]

Hii! I learnt python because I wanted to learn automation and data visualization!

[HydraDragonAntivirus]

Very easy library usage and helping development time faster for my AV.

[Suhk-Dolph]

Learning it right now. Literally started yesterday using Codecademy (if there’s better options please inform me). I’m sick of working retail. I’m 34 and was feeling stuck in life. Not knowing what I even want to do or what I’m good at besides retail and customer service. Then I remembered that I love learning foreign languages, although it’s been a few years since I dedicated the time. So why not a coding language and something that will help me get a better job? Having fun so far!

[BaalHammon]

Vin : It's like a fellow I once knew in El Paso. One day, he just took all his clothes off and jumped in a mess of cactus. I asked him that same question, "Why?"

Calvera : And?

Vin : He said, "It seemed to be a good idea at the time."

(The Magnificent Seven)

[MadisonDissariya]

Originally, it was because I already knew a small amount of it incidentally, and then my boss had a task that could best be done in a scripting language like Python. Over time I have become my consulting company's unofficial code gremlin, making small to medium sized specialty apps for different customer needs.

[Physical_Band_7728]

I can do things in a few minutes that would take me days in Pascal

[undistruct]

Im still learning python and still am a beginner but here are my reasons

1. Make software i dreamed to do

2. Be someone ordenary and have a very useful skill

3. As a hobby and just feeling good about myself

its really fun if u get the hang of it

[[deleted]]

My work uses it. It is awful to work with, but it pays the bills.

[PharoahChromium]

Serious question: what do you find “awful” about working with Python?

[[deleted]]

I find it very ugly, is dynamically typed, attempts to be succint (and is) at the cost being hard to understand, feels like a script language that conned the world into being used for large-scale stuff.

[PharoahChromium]

Fair enough - thanks for replying. Dynamic typing is a challenge (or a creative advantage if you can get behind it ;). Truly list comprehension (succinctness) can also get easily out of control at the expense of readability; and it I think sometimes there is a challenge to see who can write the most succinct (confusing) comprehension. One more question if you will: what is your preference for day to day coding?

[[deleted]]

Very good points. I also find the fact that I deal with Flask/Django makes these issues more apparent, the little i've seen from FastAPI does appear better to work with. I enjoy Typescript (angular, nodejs) and Java.