I was learning Python over the past 1 year or so, I already knew some C, back from my good old finance job, we used to make software to analyze markets, basically the same thing that I do now, just as independently. However those were Windows days.
Now I am 100% Linux, and I have realized that learning Python, which is almost like the de-facto language on Linux OS-es is very helpful. Most core softwares are probably still C due to it’s robustness and Python is still undergoing development, just recently the 3.7 version came out, and I still have 2.xx installed due to compatibility.
But Python is a user-level language, not for coding system-essentials, but for higher levels applications and tools to make your computing life easier. So without further due, here are 5 reasons why learning Python is essential in my opinion.
1) It empowers you
Believe it or not but you can customize almost any aspect of your OS with it. I mean from writing screensavers, to video games, so cryptocurrency trading bots, to all other sorts of helpful tools.
You can even write your own AI, there are AI packages, and you can make it learn anything. It sounds very interesting, I will also have to check it out in the future.
2) Helps your automate repetitive tasks
You can literally create an automated computing experience for yourself. For instance I am in the process of making a python script for writing Steemit articles.
Not a bot or anything, but a script that will:
- Spell check my articles
- Format it, tabs and spaces
- Insert the
<center></center>code automatically + my signature at the bottom
So basically when you are at your computer you do tons of repetitive tasks, copy pasting files, organizing directories, all of it can be automated.
I have made an automatic backup system for myself. I have a python script that backs up all my data, packs it in a tar.gz file, encrypts it, and then uploads it into a cloud server.
Sure sure, you can do that by default with their software, however I don’t trust cloud servers, that is why I encrypt it beforehand, and then upload it.
I have also set the backups system to run at every boot and shutdown, thus all my important files are saved frequently, so I don’t have to worry about a crash or my house burning down, my data is secured.
3) Keeps you in control
It’s very annoying when other apps, especially closed sourced ones, manage your stuff. You can’t trust them, plus you have to learn how to play their game.
So I don’t do that, I just write my own scripts whenever possible.
For instance I love LibreOffice, it’s the best open-source office manager, however it has some annoying features it’s calculations are not very precise, plus it freezes when I load a lot of data in it.
So I just use python to manage big data, for a data point with more than 200,000 elements, LibreOffice usually freezes if not crashes.
With python I can reasonably handle 2-10 million datapoints in reasonable time, and have good accuracy too. Plus I can tweak and code anything I want there instead of learning their complicated macros and other useless scripting features. (besides macros are insecure).
Conclusion
So that’s about it, hopefully many more people will learn how to program. It’s not even as nerdy, it can be extremely helpful, especially in finance.
I am even in the process of automating my accounting and plotting chars for my portfolio, it has a lot of statistical/financial benefit over a Spreadsheet tool.
For instance if your finger slips you can accidentally overwrite or mistype something in a cell in the spreadsheet, and then it messes up your entire accounting statistics.
In python you can just create a checksum for every modification and compare changes every time via some data structure management library. It’s more robust, both for personal and corporate finance.
Sources:
https://pixabay.com
https://www.pexels.com/
