Benefits of Learning Python for Business Professionals

In this article, we discuss the benefits of learning Python for a professional.

What Is Python?

There are many benefits to learning Python programming. But what is Python? It is a high-level programming language, designed to be easy to read, write, and understand, with a focus on expressing complex concepts concisely and intuitively.

Python is also a general-purpose programming language. Developers use it for a wide range of applications and tasks, as opposed to domain-specific languages focused on specific use cases or fields. Python is used for web development, software development, machine learning, and scripting, among others.

You may not believe it, but Python is not so young! It was conceived in the late 80s by Guido Van Rossum, a Dutch programmer, who released the first version of Python in 1991. Python was originally used as a scripting language, but it is living a second life with the growth of the artificial intelligence and machine learning fields.

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Today, almost all large organizations work with Python: Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Spotify, among others. Even NASA uses Python! Everybody uses it no matter the industry: web development, games, graphics, finance, science, electronic design automation, software development, education, business software, and even in government.

But hey, why is Python so popular? First, Python has a clear syntax, free of redundant brackets or parentheses. This makes it an easy-to-understand and easy-to-write programming language, a perfect fit for beginners. Look at this piece of code:

# List of numbers
numbers = [10, 20, 30, 40, 50]

# Define a function to calculate the average
def calculate_average(numbers):
    return sum(numbers) / len(numbers)

# Call the function and print the result
result = calculate_average(numbers)
print("The average is: ", result)

Pretty simple, isn’t it? Note that we use built-in functions sum and len to calculate the average of the list of numbers.

Python is really easy to learn. Xavier Rigoulet explained it in his article “Is Python Hard To Learn?” Take a look.

Second, Python has a huge and friendly community that is always there to help if you struggle with your code. Collaborative websites like Stack Overflow have more than 2 million questions and answers related to Python. That’s tremendous! So, don’t be afraid to start programming; if you have a question, it has probably been answered already. If not, anonymous heroes are standing by to help you.

Third, there are many Python resources. An enthusiastic community provides content through GitHub repositories, articles, and videos, among others. Also, the official repository PyPi has many packages and libraries for your Python projects.

Still not convinced? Read the awesome article “Why Is Python so Popular?” by Rebecca McKeown.

Why Is Learning Python Worth it?

Python is great, but is it worth learning? The answer is YES, it is! Let me explain why.

First, Python offers many career options. With proficiency in Python, you can become a data scientist or machine learning engineer, a web developer, a software engineer, or even a DevOps engineer or cybersecurity analyst. All these jobs use Python daily, with scripts, frameworks, and data models, among others.

Xavier Rigoulet wrote this excellent article “Python Jobs to Choose in 2023,” which has an extensive list of Python jobs.

Then, Python jobs pay well. This may be one of the most important advantages of learning Python for many of us. According to the review website Glassdoor, a Python developer in the United States is paid US$102K a year on average, and a machine learning engineer is paid US$132K a year on average. Juicy! The demand is high, and the pay, too.

According to the Stack Overflow 2022 Developer Survey, almost 18% of the developers who are not currently using Python have expressed interest in learning it. The Python programming market is still growing. It is getting more difficult to continue to stay out of it!

4 Benefits of Learning Python Programming

So, Python is great and pays well. What are the benefits of learning Python? Let’s see.

1.     Python offers a better way to solve problems with code

Python is a very easy-to-understand and easy-to-write language. So, you can solve a problem very quickly with a program written in Python. Python also has efficient built-in functions that provide the most common operations a developer needs to solve a problem.

If that is not enough, keep in mind that there are plenty of packages, libraries, and frameworks available on the official repository for solving a specific problem. For example, say you are working on a financial application and need to calculate the internal rate of return. Don’t do it from scratch yourself! The NumPy library already provides this calculation.

2.     You can automate boring everyday tasks and improve your work efficiency

Python is the ideal language for task automation. With a simple script, you can automate boring, manual tasks.

This is a totally helpful solution for startups with very minimal staff as seen in the example below.

For example, imagine your boss has asked you to check that prices are showing correctly on the company’s e-commerce site, twice a day. Dude, that’s boring, and you have other things to do! You can easily write a Python script that scrapes a list of URLs of the website, check that the prices are correct, take a screenshot of each URL as proof, and store them in a repository.

3.     Python is the main language of data science

Over the years, Python has become the main programming language used for artificial intelligence and data science because of its powerful libraries and frameworks. For data manipulation and analysis, you can use NumPy, pandas, and SciPy, among others.

These libraries provide the tools to clean, process, and analyze large datasets. Then, you can use the Matplotlib and seaborn libraries to visualize patterns and relationships in the data. If you want to build and train accurate models with your data, you can easily do so with scikit or TensorFlow, for example.

4.     Tests are easy to perform

Some of us developers skip this part of development sometimes – by laziness or by lack of time – and we should not! Each piece of code we write needs to be tested to ensure that the application we are working on runs perfectly. Python has plenty of libraries and frameworks to perform unit tests and integration tests in your application: unittest, pytest, or django.test, among others.

Here is a great tip: use the library Coverage for all your testing. This library maps all your tests and indicates which part of your code (classes, functions, etc.) has not been considered for testing. This helps you avoid possible errors in the future. While it varies according to the application, 80% is considered a good coverage goal.

Let’s Reap the Benefits of Learning Python!

I hope this article has made you consider the benefits of learning Python. I encourage you to start on your Python development career path!

Want to go further with Python? I strongly recommend the track Learn Programming with Python. It gives you all the information you need to begin in the wonderful world of Python programming.

Thanks for reading – keep it fun with Python!