Python - The Global Programming Language

When Guido van Rossum developed Python, little did he know that it would evolve to be a global programming language in the coming years. By the end of 2019, Python would be the universally accepted programming language, all because of its business advantages.

And Python is growing fast! By fast, I mean incredibly fast.





Source: Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow, the developers’ forum, witnessed a huge spike in the number of questions related to Python. This strongly points towards the tremendous interest and spike in Python usage.

Read more: What is the Future Scope for Python Django Web Development?

Popular uses of Python

Also read: 7 reasons why Python is the ultimate choice of startups in 2020

When Instagram chose Python!

Instagram, the most-popular photo-centric social media platform, is home for 1 billion users around the globe. Every day, around 95 million photos are shared on Instagram. It is the most active social networking platform that hosts a large user community.

Would you believe me if I said that such a large social media application runs on Python? Well, that’s the truth. Instagram is the biggest Python user in the world. Back in 2016, the engineering team at Instagram had declared that they had the world’s largest deployment of the Django web framework, written entirely in Python. They have the Django and Python stack in execution for almost 8 years now.

Since its inception, Instagram has doubled in size over the past two years. In 2017, Instagram migrated most of its code base from Python 2.7 to Python 3. As we can see, they have taken the Python/Django stack quite far already. Copy-on-write friendly Python garbage-collection to improve memory utilization and enhancing performance with background data prefetching are few examples from the lot.

Also read: Off-the-shelf v/s Custom-software - Which to choose



Why did Instagram choose Python?





The team at Instagram chose Python because of its simplicity and practicality. They felt that it better aligned with their philosophy of “do the simple things first.”

When co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, came up with the product idea, they were looking for the best available framework in the market. Python/Django, being a popular framework, captivated their attention. The developer-friendly and productive nature of Python were immediately in speculation. The maturity of the Python language and Django framework encouraged them further to consider the stack for product development.

Developing the application in Python also meant that a large pool of talented Python engineers is available around the globe. It was easy to grow the engineering team without any bottlenecks. The practicality of Python indicated that it was easy to become productive and thus, speed up the time-to-market. After all, developer velocity is the biggest concern when it comes to launching your product on time.

Python has the capability to support over 3 billion users with its stack shared across multiple geographic locations. To the Instagram engineering team, adopting a simple and clean language such as Python meant that they could focus on adding more value to user-facing features. Moving forward, the strongly felt that Python would prove highly-beneficent. Hence, they narrowed on Python/Django stack and has been running on it from then on.

Also read: Can Your Enterprise choose Python for Software Development?

Also read: When you should choose Django framework



Bottom Line: Python has undoubtedly the best business advantages!

Python is simple, clean, and favors pragmatism. As a proven technology, Python offers a convenient option to get started with your new product. Although it is not considered a fast technology, efficiency and scalability of Python to support user and feature growth have become easy with Python version 3. Again, Instagram is a popular example to consider when you are thinking about migrating to Python 3.

At SayOne, almost 80 percent of our clients’ applications run on Python/Django stack. Performance efficiency is no longer the primary concern for businesses. But developer velocity and time-to-market are and will always be. For these reasons, we find a majority of our customers choosing Python/Django as their technology stack for sustainable business growth.

Want to know more about our Python development offerings? Speak to our team directly.