You appear to be a naturally skilled problem solver who understands how parts logically fit together to form a functioning whole. Maybe you thrive on finding better, more efficient ways forward, which is great for building dynamic custom tools or solutions from scratch.
Relevant job titles
Full-Stack Software Engineer
Front-End Web Developer
Engineering Manager
Technical Support Engineer
Solutions Engineer
Data Scientist
Data Engineer
Business Intelligence Analyst
Product Analyst
Marketing Analyst
YOUR IDEAL COLLABORATORS
Your ideal collaborators may include developers and technical stakeholders, as well as data analysts and visual communicators. These above-mentioned roles will allow you to collaborate with an assortment of teams — marketing, finance, sales, product, and design — while utilizing an array of crossover skill sets.
CURIOUS TO EXPLORE?
Here are some great starting places to inspire you:
You appear to be a strategic thinker with a knack for balancing vision, intuition, adaptibility, and logic to achieve aspirational goals. You’re energized by people and care about what’s best for your teams, users, and ultimately, the big picture strategy. You might find it rewarding to work with cross-functional stakeholders and data to guide campaigns and product launches toward long-term success.
Relevant job titles
Marketing Manager
Content Strategist
SEO Specialist
Product Marketing Manager
Brand Manager
Marketing Operations Manager
Business Intelligence Analyst
Product Manager
Data Analyst
Technical Project Manager
YOUR IDEAL COLLABORATORS
Your ideal collaborators may include like-minded strategists with interests that span business, design, and tech, as well as strong verbal communicators and visual problem solvers. These above-mentioned roles allow you to collaborate with an assortment of teams — marketing, finance, sales, product, and design — while utilizing an array of crossover skill sets.
CURIOUS TO EXPLORE?
Here are some great starting places to inspire you:
You appear to be an empathetic visual thinker that’s attuned to aesthetic details and how they’re perceived. You care deeply about others, and can conduct interviews and research needed to understand and offer clear solutions to usability problems. You may be well-suited to help create delightful, useful experiences and compelling designs.
Relevant job titles
User Experience Designer
UX Researcher
Interaction Designer
Product Designer
User Interface Designer
Product Manager
Product Analyst
Project Manager
Business Intelligence Analyst
Data Scientist
YOUR IDEAL COLLABORATORS
Your ideal collaborators may include like-minded visual communicators, as well as content strategists, marketers, data analysts, and developers. These above-mentioned roles will allow you to collaborate with an assortment of teams — marketing, finance, sales, product, and design — while utilizing an array of crossover skill sets.
CURIOUS TO EXPLORE?
Here are some great starting places to inspire you:
You appear to be an empathetic visual thinker that’s attuned to aesthetic details and how they’re perceived. You can balance data, logic, vision, and intuition to understand and offer clear solutions to usability problems. You may be well-suited to help craft delightfully efficient, useful experiences and compelling designs.
Relevant job titles
Product Designer
User Interface Designer
UX Researcher
Interaction Designer
User Interface Developer
Full-Stack Software Engineer
Front-End Web Developer
Business Intelligence Analyst
Data Engineer
Product Analyst
YOUR IDEAL COLLABORATORS
Your ideal collaborators may include like-minded visual communicators, as well as researchers, content strategists, product managers, data analysts, and developers. These above-mentioned roles will allow you to collaborate with an assortment of teams — marketing, finance, sales, product, and design — while utilizing an array of crossover skill sets.
CURIOUS TO EXPLORE?
Here are some great starting places to inspire you:
You appear to be a big picture thinker with a knack for balancing vision, intuition, adaptability, and logic to achieve clear goals. You thrive around other people and care about what’s best for the team and your users. You might find it rewarding to work with cross-functional stakeholders and data to guide complex projects toward long-term success.
Relevant job titles
Product Manager
Technical Project Manager
Product Analyst
Product Owner
Operations Manager
Web Developer
Technical Support Engineer
Business Intelligence Analyst
Data Engineer
Solutions Engineer
YOUR IDEAL COLLABORATORS
Your ideal collaborators may include like-minded strategists with interests that span business, design, and tech, as well as strong visual communicators. These above-mentioned roles will allow you to collaborate with an assortment of teams — marketing, finance, sales, product, and design — while utilizing an array of crossover skill sets.
CURIOUS TO EXPLORE?
Here are some great starting places to inspire you:
General Assembly (GA) is a community committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We aim to provide a welcoming environment for everyone at GA: students, staff, instructors, clients, and anyone who walks through our doors, physical or virtual. No matter what, we strive to uphold our work value to “Keep Getting Better” in our diversity journey.
In the United States, where many in our community are located, there is a long history of violence and harassment against People of Color. Now that many people carry cameras with them and have instant access to social media, these acts of violence and harassment are more likely to be swiftly and readily exposed. In recent weeks, we have experienced a shared sense of grief and horror over the untimely deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and the harassment of Christian Cooper.
We stand with Black and Brown People and are fully committed to creating physically and emotionally safe spaces for our entire GA community. Black lives matter. We do not tolerate racism or racial harassment of any kind — and we never will. In that spirit, we share this reflection by James Page, General Assembly’s Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion:
As a Black man in America, I’ve been aware since my teen years that others’ fears are closely linked to my skin color. While I found some humor when a White woman would clutch her purse as I walked by, there was also significant frustration. I was a nerdy Catholic school kid who liked to crack a joke. However, my identity as a Black man was perceived as dangerous and threatening in a way that superseded anything else about me.
In 2016, I took a trip to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture with my 13-year-old son. I will never forget the Emmett Till exhibit, where an open casket holds a photo of Emmett’s beaten and deformed face. I was frozen. I held my son’s hand, and without any real awareness, tears began to roll down my face.
My son asked me what was wrong. I explained that Emmett was a 14-year-old African-American boy who was visiting family in Mississippi in 1955. A White woman accused him of whistling at her, and he was brutally beaten and murdered by two White men. The killers were found not guilty, even though they admitted to killing him one year later. They were confident that the American legal system would protect them. Sixty-two years later, Emmett’s accuser admitted she lied — he never whistled at her. Her false accusation was enough to end that young man’s life with no recourse to his accuser or his murderers.
Fair-minded people can agree that taking another human life is wrong, and share the sense of outrage at the senseless, recent deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. However, the story of Emmett Till and its connection to the story of Amy Cooper speaks to a much deeper pattern of racism, exploitation, and injustice that is pervasive and prevalent in our society.
Why am I angry at the justice system and our police force? Why am I angry at Amy Cooper? Why should we all be angry? Because she shared the same sense of privilege and entitlement as Emmett’s accuser when she called the police on Christian Cooper. She knew that if she called 911 and expressed fear as a White woman threatened by a Black man, she would be believed, and a Black man would be punished, regardless of what actually happened. She weaponized her racial advantage and it could have been lethal to Christian Cooper: just as it was when Carolyn Bryant lied about Emmett Till, when Eleanor Strubing accused Joseph Spell of rape, and when Tom Robinson was accused of raping Mayella Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Black men have been conditioned to fear the police, the U.S. justice system, and White women. It is well known that when the cops, or “the posse” show up, the Black man — a 14-year-old Black boy visiting family, a Black man in a consensual relationship with a White woman, a Black character in one of the greatest novels of all time, or a Black Harvard grad birdwatching in a park — can be arrested, beaten, jailed, abused, and subjected to extreme acts of violence. His Black body can be deemed disposable, be made an example of, and deemed unimportant, a piece of property for the public; another piece of “strange fruit – blood on the leaves, blood at the root.”
While fear is closely linked to my identity, passed on from generation to generation, it is a fear that I must submit to — unbelievable in 2020. I must learn and follow the unspoken rules. I must fear the police, the justice system, bank lenders, the President of the United States, and the White woman clutching her purse — innocuous people or protectors under any other circumstance. As Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote, “It is not necessary that you believe that the officer who choked Eric Garner set out that day to destroy a body. All you need to understand is that the officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy, and they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be Black.”
The only way to end this ongoing cycle is to educate ourselves, show up for People of Color, and get involved in the political process. This is not a new moment in our nation’s history, but part of the ongoing suffering, injustice, and inhumane treatment of minorities; these acts of aggression, violence, and unequal rights we are experiencing right now create real trauma for communities of color who have to live every day in fear. All of us have a role to play in dismantling institutional racism in this country; all of us must help address — and heal — that trauma. Now is the time to stand together and say, “No. More.”
If you are looking for ways to show up as an ally in this time, here are some places to get started — we share a handful of resources and it is by no means exhaustive:
Spend time reading and learning. Read the work of James Baldwin, Ta-Nahesi Coates, Angela Davis, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Richard Wright, and Malcolm X. More recent books like How to be Antiracist, White Fragility, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?, and White Rage provide contemporary insight on how to show up for communities of color. Purchase them from your local bookstore, and check out more resources here. They are truly eye-opening.
Support organizations that are moving the needle on racial justice. Color of Change, Campaign Zero, the Anti-Racism Project, the NAACP, UnidosUS, and the ACLU are but a handful of the organizations working nationally and locally for social justice issues facing communities of color. Sign up for their mailing lists, donate, respond to their calls to action, and find other ways to get involved.
Stand up for People of Color.When you see wrong, stand up for what is right. Call out racist actions — explicit or implicit — when you see them. When justice is compromised, protest, and challenge it until it creates change. You can learn more about how to be an ally here and here.
Get involved in the political process. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, demand accountability from your elected officials and advocate and support candidates who share your values. Most importantly, vote (register here) – and encourage others in your community to do the same.
At General Assembly, we will never compromise on ensuring that everyone within our community gets treated with dignity and respect. In the spirit of our shared commitment to learning, we urge all of you to engage on these issues with curiosity, humility, empathy, and self-awareness in service of active dialogue, brave allyship, and the human goodness that can be brought out by all of us.
Over the years, GA’s career coaches have helped thousands of students from our full-time immersive programs land jobs with our A-list hiring partners. Now, with a transformed hiring climate, many career changers are faced with more uncertainty than ever about the likelihood of getting a new role, let alone navigating a job search remotely.
The good news is that there are reasons to be hopeful. In this recorded session, get expert advice from GA’s U.S. career coaches on how job searching has been transformed by COVID-19. Whether you’re on an active job search or curious about what the U.S. job market is like right now, you’ll gain valuable insight about how job seeking has changed and how you can stand out amongst the competition—regardless of your work experience.
As a blooming Python developer who has just written some Python code, you’re immediately faced with the important question, “how do I run it?” Before answering that question, let’s back up a little to cover one of the fundamental elements of Python.
An Interpreted Language
Python is an interpreted programming language, meaning Python code must be run using the Pythoninterpreter.
Traditional programming languages like C/C++ are compiled, meaning that before it can be run, the human-readable code is passed into a compiler (special program) to generate machine code – a series of bytes providing specific instructions to specific types of processors. However, Python is different. Since it’s an interpreted programming language, each line of human-readable code is passed to an interpreter that converts it to machine code at run time.
So to run Python code, all you have to do is point the interpreter at your code.
Different Versions of the Python Interpreter
It’s critical to point out that there are different versions of the Python interpreter. The major versions you’ll likely see are Python 2 and Python 3, but there are sub-versions (i.e. Python 2.7, Python 3.5, Python 3.7, etc.). Sometimes these differences are subtle. Sometimes they’re dramatically different. It’s important to always know which version is compatible with your Python code.
Run a script using the Python interpreter
To run a script, we have to point the Python interpreter at our Python code…but how do we do that? There are a few different ways, and there are some differences between how Windows and Linux/Mac do things. For these examples, we’re assuming that both Python 2.7 and Python 3.5 are installed.
Our Test Script
For our examples, we’re going to start by using this simple script called test.py.
test.py print(“Aw yeah!”)'
How to Run a Python Script on Windows
The py Command
The default Python interpreter is referenced on Windows using the command py. Using the Command Prompt, you can use the -V option to print out the version.
Command Prompt > py -V Python 3.5
You can also specify the version of Python you’d like to run. For Windows, you can just provide an option like -2.7 to run version 2.7.
Command Prompt > py -2.7 -V Python 2.7
On Windows, the .py extension is registered to run a file with that extension using the Python interpreter. However, the version of the default Python interpreter isn’t always consistent, so it’s best to always run your scripts as explicitly as possible.
To run a script, use the py command to specify the Python interpreter followed by the name of the script you want to run with the interpreter. To avoid using the full path to your script (i.e. X:\General Assembly\test.py), make sure your Command Prompt is in the same directory as your script. For example, to run our script test.py, run the following command:
Command Prompt > py -3.5 test.py Aw yeah!
Using a Batch File
If you don’t want to have to remember which version to use every time you run your Python program, you can also create a batch file to specify the command. For instance, create a batch file called test.bat with the contents:
test.bat @echo off py -3.5 test.py
This file simply runs your py command with the desired options. It includes an optional line “@echo off” that prevents the py command from being echoed to the screen when it’s run. If you find the echo helpful, just remove that line.
Now, if you want to run your Python program test.py, all you have to do is run this batch file.
Command Prompt > test.bat Aw yeah!
How to Run a Python Script on Linux/Mac
The py Command
Linux/Mac references the Python interpreter using the command python. Similar to the Windows py command, you can print out the version using the -V option.
Terminal $ python -V Python 2.7
For Linux/Mac, specifying the version of Python is a bit more complicated than Windows because the python commands are typically a bunch of symbolic links (symlinks) or shortcuts to other commands. Typically, python is a symlink to the command python2, python2 is a symlink to a command like python2.7, and python3 is a symlink to a command like python3.5. One way to view the different python commands available to you is using the following command:
This special shebang line tells the computer how to interpret the contents of the file. If you executed the file test.py without that line, it would look for special instruction bytes and be confused when all it finds is text. With that line, the computer knows that it should run the contents of the file as Python code using the Python interpreter.
You could also replace that line with the full path to the interpreter:
#!/usr/bin/python3.5
However, different versions of Linux might install the Python interpreter in different locations, so this method can cause problems. For maximum portability, I always use the line with /usr/bin/env that looks for the python3.5 command by searching the PATH environment variable, but the choice is up to you.
Next, we’re going to set the permissions of this file to be executable with this command:
Terminal $ chmod +x test.py
Now we can run the program using the command ./test.py!
Terminal $ ./test.py Aw yeah!
Pretty sweet, eh?
Run the Python Interpreter Interactively
One of the awesome things about Python is that you can run the interpreter in an interactive mode. Instead of using your py or python command pointing to a file, run it by itself, and you’ll get something that looks like this:
Command Prompt > py Python 3.7.3 (v3.7.3:ef4ec6ed12, Mar 25 2019, 21:26:53) [MSC v.1916 32 bit (Intel)] on win32 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>>
Now you get an interactive command prompt where you can type in individual lines of Python!
Command Prompt (Python Interpreter) >>> print(“Aw yeah!”) Aw yeah!
What’s great about using the interpreter in interactive mode is that you can test out individual lines of Python code without writing an entire program. It also remembers what you’ve done, just like in a script, so things like functions and variables work the exact same way.
Command Prompt (Python Interpreter) >>> x = "Still got it." >>> print(x) Still got it.
How to Run a Python Script from a Text Editor
Depending on your workflow, you may prefer to run your Python program directly from your text editor. Different text editors provide fancy ways of doing the same thing we’ve already done — pointing the Python interpreter at your Python code. To help you along, I’ve provided instructions on how to do this in four popular text editors.
Notepad++
VSCode
Sublime Text
Vim
1. Notepad++
Notepad++ is my favorite general purpose text editor to use on Windows. It’s also super easy to run a Python program from it.
Step 1: Press F5 to open up the Run… dialogue
Step 2: Enter the py command like you would on the command line, but instead of entering the name of your script, use the variable FULL_CURRENT_PATH like so:
py -3.5 -i "$(FULL_CURRENT_PATH)"
You’ll notice that I’ve also included a -i option to our py command to “inspect interactively after running the script”. All that means is it leaves the command prompt open after it’s finished, so instead of printing “Aw yeah!” and then immediately quitting, you get to see the Python program’s output.
Step 3: Click Run
2. VSCode
VSCode is a Windows text editor designed specifically to work with code, and I’ve recently become a big fan of it. Running a Python program from VSCode is a bit complicated to set it up, but once you’ve done that, it works quite nicely.
Step 1: Go to the Extensions section by clicking this symbol or pressing CTRL+SHIFT+X.
Step 2: Search and install the extensions named Python and Code Runner, then restart VSCode.
Step 3: Right click in the text area and click the Run Code option or press CTRL+ALT+N to run the code.
Note: Depending on how you installed Python, you might run into an error here that says ‘python’ is not recognized as an internal or external command. By default, Python only installs the py command, but VSCode is quite intent on using the python command which is not currently in your PATH. Don’t worry, we can easily fix that.
Step 3.1: Locate your Python installation binary or download another copy from www.python.org/downloads. Run it, then select Modify.
Step 3.2: Click next without modifying anything until you get to the Advanced Options, then check the box next to Add Python to environment variables. Then click Install, and let it do its thing.
Step 3.3: Go back to VSCode and try again. Hopefully, it should now look a bit more like this:
3. Sublime Text
Sublime Text is a popular text editor to use on Mac, and setting it up to run a Python program is super simple.
Step 1: In the menu, go to Tools → Build System and select Python.
Step 2: Press command ⌘ +b or in the menu, go to Tools → Build.
4. Vim
Vim is my text editor of choice when it comes to developing on Linux/Mac, and it can also be used to easily run a Python program.
Step 1: Enter the command :w !python3 and hit enter.
Step 2: Profit.
Now that you can successfully run your Python code, you’re well on your way to speaking parseltongue!
If you search on Amazon for books using the key phrase “UX design”, more than 1,000 titles will appear. That’s a lot of titles to wade through if you’re looking to read about user experience! One of the most difficult parts of making a list of the best UX books is that there are so many awesome ones out there. I could write a must-read list that goes on forever.
I chose the following UX titles either because they have played a significant role in the way I view my place as a UX designer or because they address foundational design topics that every UX designer should understand. I’m leaving out a fair number that have been published in all aspects of design, from usability and research to interaction design and how to present and speak to your design decisions. This reading list is intended for you to use as a starting point.
1. Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra
Kathy Sierra’s book is all about the strategy for creating successful products and services. Badass: Making Users Awesome looks at how to look at a product or service from the user’s perspective.
So instead of relying on marketing tactics that might be unethical, we can create products that lead users to champion them with their friends and family. A win for everyone!
The design and layout of the book is unlike that of most — it lays out the argument with a lot of visuals. And it’s an easy read. This has led to some negative reviews complaining that the book is just a PowerPoint PDF. Lay that aside, and the message is strong. It’s a great look at the point-of-view statement and how a well-written one can be influential in creating awesome products that users love.
When you read this book, it will start to make sense why some products do really well in the market and why others don’t. It will help show you how to shift your design strategy so that it can be successful too.
This slim how-to manual, published by A Book Apart, walks the reader through the basics of user research, from talking to stakeholders in an organization through analysis and reporting. Hall’s writing style makes the topic — which can be dry in other books — fun and approachable.
She’s also realistic in her advice to readers. She recognizes the constraints in time and budget that all UX designers face in their day to day jobs, so she proposes how best to navigate these situations and what alternative methods to employ.
Just Enough Research’s current edition was updated with a new chapter on surveys and why designers must be very careful about using these often-abused metrics in their research.
Even if you aren’t a UX researcher, this book explains how you can implement research in your process and spot your own biases so you can design a better user experience.
3. The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
The Design of Everyday Things is a standard on most design-reading lists for a reason. This book was originally published in 1988 with the title “The Psychology of Everyday Things”. It was revised in 2013 with a major update to some of the examples to make it more relevant to today.
Norman’s book lays the landscape for usability in human-centered design. In it, Norman lays out how human psychology affects everyday actions, why it’s natural for humans to make mistakes, and how technology can help rather than cause errors. Norman also explains human-centered design and proposes principles for good design.
I listened to this book on Audible, and a PDF accompanied the audio book so I could view the examples, which are especially helpful in understanding affordances and signifiers.
Vox produced a great video about one of the examples in the book — how doors are designed well, and how they are designed badly. If you’ve ever struggled with figuring out a door, sink, stove, switches, or other interface — the problem isn’t you. It’s the design.
Norman’s classic book explains why bad design happens, what good design is, and the constraints designers face when designing.
4. Designing with the Mind in Mind by Jeff Johnson
Sometimes designers follow a set of rules for designing user interfaces without understanding why certain patterns and methods work. This book changes that.
For example, how does human perception work? How is the eye structured and how do we read? What can we do as designers to ensure that people can see the information we design?
Johnson walks through an explanation of human vision, attention, memory, and decision-making for a deep-dive into why we perceive the way we perceive. After reading this book, UX designers will have a better idea of why we have design rules so they can make educated decisions about tradeoffs between budget, time, and competing design rules.
5. About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design 4th Edition by Alan Cooper, Robert Reiman, David Cronin, and Christopher Noessel
About Face completely changed the way I think about interaction design. Admittedly, I’ve only read sections of the book, due to its length. Still, it’s a reference when I have questions about how to approach interaction design and UI design.
This book is broken into three parts. It starts with introducing goal-directed design and how to approach digital projects. Then it moves through designing for behavior and form. Lastly, it looks at the differences in designing for desktop, mobile, and web applications.
My read of the book focused on designing for behavior, and my biggest “ah-ha” moment came when reading about optimizing for intermediate users. Much of the struggle designers have is in how to manage the different needs between beginners and experts. This chapter explains that we should focus on intermediates. We should guide beginning users to become intermediates as soon as possible, and aim to provide opportunities for advanced users to use our products without holding them back.
This book includes a number of other useful concepts to consider when designing user interfaces. At 659 pages, it might be a little too much to read in one sitting, but it should be in the designer library.
6. Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
Steve Krug’s classic book introduced me to usability and usability testing, and launched me into my current career as a UX designer. Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability is now in its third edition.
It’s short, easy to read, and a great manual for designers just getting started in usability testing. Krug wrote it based on his 30 years as a usability consultant for organizations including Apple, NPR, and the International Monetary Fund. Even if you already understand why you should do usability testing, chances are you work with people who don’t understand. This book is a great gift for those people. It explains why you should test, how to keep it simple, and how to keep it from being a budget suck. The newest edition has a new chapter about usability for mobile websites and apps, and all of the examples are updated.
IDEO CEO Tim Brown explains design thinking and how it should be used at every level of a business. This isn’t a manual for designers. It’s geared towards people outside of the industry, but I included it on this list because of the examples.
IDEO is a well-known human-centered design firm, and the examples Brown provides are straight from IDEO’s project list. While sometimes it feels more like a sales pitch, the case studies are interesting examples of how design thinking is applied.
UX designers who read this book can look at design thinking from a perspective outside the industry and use the examples to explain how design thinking can be used in every industry and in every discipline — it’s not just for designers.
Conclusion
I couldn’t include all of my favorite user experience books on this list. There are just too many amazing titles, and I already have about three times as many on my “to-read” list. These must-read UX design books are a great place to get started if you’re looking for some summer reading to help you advance your design career.
Python is a popular and versatile programming language. But what is Python used for? If you’re interested in learning Python or are in the process of learning how to code in Python, your efforts will be greatly rewarded as there’s so much you can do with it. In this article, we’ll explore the top three major uses for Python.
Before we dive into the uses, let’s briefly discuss why Python has so many uses in the first place. What characteristics does Python have that allow it to be so useful? Python is:
General-purpose: The language was designed to be “general purpose”, meaning it doesn’t have language constructs to force it into a specific application domain. Other programming languages that are general-purpose include (but are not limited to): C++, Go, Java, JavaScript, and Ruby.
Readable: Python is a high-level programming language, meaning it has a higher level of abstraction from machine language and has a simple syntax and semantics (e.g., indentation instead of curly brackets to indicate blocks), which lends to its readability.
Versatile: Python has a large standard library, meaning it comes equipped with a lot of specialized code to handle different tasks. For example, instead of writing your own Python code to read and write CSV files, you can use the csv module’s reader and writer objects. In addition, there are many open-source libraries and frameworks that provide additional value for Python programmers — especially those in machine learning, deep learning, application development, and game development — and scientific computing will find an ample supply of libraries and modules.
What is Python used for? There are so many different tasks that Python can accomplish. You can use it to build recommender systems, create cool charts and graphs, build restful APIs, program robots, conduct scientific computing, manipulate text data or extract text from images; the list goes on and on.
The best way to think about uses for Python is through the most active and popular disciplines that rely on Python programming:
Artificial intelligence and machine learning
Data analysis and data visualization
Web development
1. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
What it is: Artificial Intelligence is a concept that’s more or less the idea of machines or computers that mimic human cognitive functions such as “learning” and “problem-solving.” Activities like driving a car, playing chess, and answering a question are all structured, logic-based things that humans can do that are being implemented by computers today. At the heart of this activity is machine learning, which is the process that a computer takes to learn the relationships between variables in data so well that it can predict future outcomes (usually on unseen data). If data is the input (“knowledge”), the machines understand the relationships between variables (“learning”) and it can predict what the next step is (“outcome”) — then you have machine learning.
How Python is used: Artificial intelligence requires a lot of data, which in turn requires appropriate storage, pre-processing, and data modeling techniques to be implemented. Deep learning is the intermediary component; it’s the use of specialized models (neural networks) that can handle “big data” at scale. Python is a programming language of choice for the machine learning, deep learning, and artificial intelligence community due to it being a minimalistic and intuitive language with a significant number of libraries dedicated to machine learning activities, which reduces the time required to implement and get results. R is another popular language used by machine learning enthusiasts and practitioners, but Python tends to be more popular because of the number of machine learning and AI-related efforts coming from the tech community, which uses Python. For example, TensorFlow is Google’s AI platform and open-source software library used for machine learning and the creation of neural networks for AI purposes.
What it is: Data analysis is the specialized practice of analyzing data, both big and small, for information and insights. Results of data analyses are often visualized, for the benefit of the recipient, and the tools and techniques used to communicate results visually requires the specialization that is known as data visualization. Data analysis and data visualization are not unique to any industry. It’s better to think of them as process-focused roles than industry-specific roles. After all, every company and industry has its own data to work with. What data analysis is not is the management of data from servers and storage, although some data analysts specialize in data management.
How Python is used: Data analysis and data visualization are specialized roles that can implement Python in ways that are integral to the mission of each role. A data analyst will use Python for data wrangling and data transformation, which is converting data from its raw format to a usable, analyzable format. Then, using open-sourced libraries like Pandas, NumPy, and SciPy, data analysts can manipulate and analyze both numerical and categorical data. In order to visualize data locally, additional libraries such as Seaborn, matplotlib, ggplot, and bokeh, can be used. Some data visualization professionals prefer using Python over business intelligence platforms like PowerBI and Tableau because it’s free, easy to learn, and reduces the need to have to use additional software to create visualizations.
What it is: Web development is a catch-all term for creating web applications and application programming interfaces (APIs) for the web. Web development is a highly specialized role that can be explained by the design pattern known as model, view, and controller (MVC). These terms represent the specialized layers of code of a web application or API. The model involves the code for an application’s dynamic data structure, the view involves the code that directly interacts with the user, and the controller is the code that handles user interactions and works to facilitate input going from the view to the model.
How Python is used: Python has several MVC frameworks that can be used for web application development straight out of the box, and this includes Django, turbogears, and web2py. While a web framework is not required for web development, it’s beneficial to use them as they greatly speed up the development progress. For beginners, learning Python’s syntax and the libraries needed for building a web application or API is a high level of effort, but the alternative would involve a much greater effort, as it would require the knowledge and correct use of multiple programming languages instead of Python.
We’ve explored the major uses for Python, which include machine learning and artificial intelligence, data analysis and data visualization, and web development. If you’re currently learning Python programming, then you’re off to a good start, especially if you’re considering pursuing work in any of the aforementioned areas. For those unsure how to start learning Python, I encourage you to read some of our other posts, which provide more details and tips on how to get started.
