Python for Decision Makers and Business Leaders Transcripts
Chapter: What is Python?
Lecture: Python is 4 different things
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In this chapter, we're going to talk about
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what Python is, and what it is not.
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Understanding what Python is, what constituent parts
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make it up, helps you consider whether those parts
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are valuable to you, and talk about the right level.
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Are we comparing programming languages?
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Are we comparing ecosystems?
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Are we comparing libraries?
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Is it matter that it's open source or not?
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What is open source?
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All these things we're going to talk about in this chapter.
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Well, let's start off with a really quick and easy one.
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Python, despite what you may have seen
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despite the logos, is not about snakes.
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Yes, this right here is the official
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trademarked Python logo.
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It is caricature of two snakes.
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You can see little snake eyes
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a blue snake on the top, and a yellow snake on the bottom.
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Despite that being the official logo
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Python was actually named after Monty Python
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the British comedy skit group, not python the snake.
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It doesn't really matter, but just so you know
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Python is really about Monty Python, and having fun.
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Not so much about the snake.
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More seriously though, Python is not 3
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but in fact 4 things at once.
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Here, this is Python, and this is our first bit of code.
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We haven't even seen any programming yet
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and this one is really simple.
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Like I said, I know you may not be a programmer
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but you can probably look at that for a minute
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and determine what would happen here.
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So this is what we call a function.
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If we call the function, we can pass it data.
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Name, that's the purple thing there.
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So I could say something like, Hello World, Michael.
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And then what would happen, on the screen
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it would print out two different lines
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this is Python code, nice to meet you, Michael.
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That's great, right?
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So we would see that come out.
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And this actually is the Python programming language.
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So when someone says, I want to compare C# to Python
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they may be talking about the way you structure code
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and what you have to write down here.
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But that's a very limited view of a programming language.
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Some programming languages, that's mostly what they got
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but many of the popular ones, Python, Javascript
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.NET, and so on, they have much more.
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So when you talk about them
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there's actually these layers that build.
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The next layer up is a rich standard library.
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You often hear in Python the phrase that it comes
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with batteries included, and when people say that
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they're talking about this standard library here.
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And the idea is, there are many little libraries
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are utilities that you can use to greatly simplify
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the code that you have to write
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in the programming language here on the left.
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So, in a language like C++, if I wanted
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to take a whole bunch of repeated data
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count how many times each one of them repeats
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and then sort them by how many times does it appear
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what one is the second most common
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how many times does it appear
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that might be like, 10 lines of code
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and you've got to think about the algorithm.
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You could make mistakes, but you got to think about it.
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In Python, there's built in libraries.
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I could just go, create a Counter
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and say Counter, give me the most common grouping of this.
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It will do that grouping, it'll do that sorting
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and boom, two lines of code, you have the answer
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you don't have to think about it.
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That's what we mean when we talk about
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a standard library, or a base class library.
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These rich little libraries that I can use
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to not do absolutely atomic building blocks
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and do everything from scratch, but in fact
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to build with much larger, more functional pieces.
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Taking that idea further outside of
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what Python is delivered as, if I go to python.org
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and download it, I get the first two things on the left.
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But really when people talk about the power of Python
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and you can do so much with it
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they're thinking of third party libraries as well.
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And Python has this thing called a package manager
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and the Python Package Index, which gives us access
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to literally hundreds of thousands of libraries
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some of which, you know, maybe just one of those
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is the Django web framework, or one of those
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is the Jupyter Notebook system.
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Obviously those are actually built up of
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a couple libraries each, but you get the idea.
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There's hundreds of thousands of extremely useful libraries.
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We're going to explore those a little bit.
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When they talk about Python, sometimes they're talking about
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this ecosystem, like of language plus the library
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but really all the libraries that are
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out there, open source or not.
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And the fourth one, it's hard to overlook, the people.
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Brett Cannon, one of the core developers of Python
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one of the guys who builds Python, creates Python
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and pushes it forward, has a great saying.
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He says, I came for the language
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I stayed for the community.
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And Python's community is fairly unique.
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It's very welcoming, it's more diverse
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it's people who really, really want to be there.
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Python often is a language of developer choice
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not something they're told they have to use
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but something that they rearrange
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their careers so they get to use.
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So the community is very passionate
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it's built up of millions, literally of millions
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of programmers and other folks who program with Python.
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So Python is these four things here
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the language, libraries, ecosystem, and the people.
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When people say Python is valuable
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or I'd like to compare this against this other thing
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figure out what level they're talking about
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and make sure you're comparing apples to apples.