When it comes to starting up as a programmer, the first thing that comes to one's mind is "Which programming language should I start with?" There are a ton of programming languages out there but the one that is suggested to start with most of the time is Python. As a person who deals mainly with Python, I've asked myself several times "Was Python really the best choice?"
What triggered this question were times when I'll see programming-related discussions and I won't be able to understand certain concepts that are being discussed like memory management for instance. After having this occurrence several times, I began to question myself if I made the right choice in choosing a first programming language.
Now onto the main question: Is Python really a good first programming language for beginners?
Before I give my opinion on that question, I would like to talk a bit about Python.
What is Python?
If you are not a stranger to programming, Python won't be much of a stranger to you.
Well, other than calling it a high level programming language, I don't exactly know how else to define it so I'll just give you a definition I got online. According to the kind folks at Wikipedia, "Python is a high level, general purpose programming language. It's design philosophy emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation."
Now to talk about a few pros and cons of Python.
Pros of Python
As a lot of us know, Python has an easy to read syntax. Much easier than other programming languages. In several cases, it's syntax is pretty similar to English language making it much easier to understand how the language's syntax works.
Python is a language that is all about simplicity. Performing actions in Python use less lines of code compared to other programming languages. On top of that, you don't need to worry about using a semicolon at the end of every line of code which spares you from the risk of spending 5 hours to debug your code only to discover that you forgot a semicolon.
Python assists in doing certain tasks. For instance, Python manages the memory of a program and also assigns the data type of a variable automatically. The programming language is kind enough to relieve you of that load.
As a general purpose language, Python can be used for several tasks like software development, artificial intelligence, game development and web development.
Python comes with an extensive collection of libraries that is capable of handling various tasks like database management, regular expressions, image manipulation and many others. These packages save developers from the hassle of manually completing the code for a specific task.
Cons of Python
While Python has good sides to it, there are also a few drawbacks of using Python.
Because Python is an interpreted language, it is slower than compiled languages like C++. It's line by line execution and the fact that it is dynamically typed (It automatically assigns data types to variables depending on their values) makes it a generally slower language to execute. As a result, Python is not recommended for projects where speed is an important factor. Also while the dynamically typed aspect of Python provides ease of use to developers, it can cause runtime errors.
In order to provide more simplicity to the developer, Python has to trade off its memory usage efficiency. Python tends to use more memory compared to other programming languages. So this could pose as a potential problem in programs that require memory optimization.
Summary
To answer the question "Is Python a good first programming language for beginners?", my answer would be "Yes." However, I recommend that it should be learnt mainly for starting up and getting familiar with the general programming environment. After a while, I recommend learning another language like C, C++ or Java. This is to gain a proper understanding of concepts that aren't fully explored in Python like memory management and object oriented programming which I believe will give future programs a better overall structure if applied correctly.
I'm not a professional at programming, but I would advice someone who is new to programming and started learning with Python to learn another language like C++ after spending some time using Python.
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