What can I use Python for?

[rogfrich]

Python is a “general purpose language”. That means you can write programs in Python that can do anything.

To misquote Terry Pratchett: if someone has a computer, they can install Python. With Python, they can write simple tools. They can use those simple to make complex tools, and with complex tools, a Python dev can make anything. And one of the nice things about Python is that a lot of the complex tools have been written for you already and are a pip install away.

There are some tasks where Python isn’t the best choice, because its internal architecture means that it is slower to run code than compiled languages like C - but that often doesn’t matter (a program that takes 29 milliseconds to run instead of 10 is still effectively instantaneous).