Python Attracts Rookies as Well as Pros

It is no secret that the Python programming language is peaking in popularity among data scientists. Now, would-be coders are increasingly trying to “self-master” the big data framework via online tutorials, according to an analysis of Google and YouTube searches.

Indeed, a quick YouTube search turned up a lengthy list of “Python for Beginners” tutorials promising to help novice coders master the programming language in just a few hours.

An in-depth analysis of what wannabe code jockeys are most interested in learning counted 235,000 combined monthly searches on Google and YouTube for Python tutorials. Demand for Python courses far outpaced other programming languages, software vendor Specops reported this week.

The Java programming language came in a distant second with 84,000 monthly searches. Farther down the search rankings were R (14,000 a month) and, bring up the rear, Rust (2,150 monthly searches).

“As one of the most versatile coding languages today, it should come as no surprise that [Python] is one of the most popular programming languages for those wanting to learn how to code—particularly beginners,” the coding survey concluded.

A separate Specops survey released earlier in October found that Python skills are also in high demand by employers, especially cyber security vendors.

The “self-mastering” survey released this week reported about 182,000 monthly Google searches on “learn Python,” helping to generate and estimated 53,000 YouTube scans. (Google owns YouTube.)

While ubiquitous Java and C++ programming languages ranked second and third, respectively, the SQL relational database language also continues to attract novice programmers, with an estimated 45,000 monthly searches.

The survey also broke down monthly searches by geographic region, reporting similar results for would-be programmers in Australia, Canada and the U.K.

The results collected, tabulated and released earlier this week are based on Google and YouTube searches during the previous month.

Specops also said it tracked searches for the top 13 programming languages between September and October.

The findings confirm earlier usage surveys that have consistently ranked Python at or near the top of data scientists’ programming language preferences. One reason is the growing number of tools and libraries used to explore big data sets. Python is also viewed as a general-purpose language that can be widely applied beyond data science.

Unlike earlier usage surveys focused on data scientists’ preferences, the Specops analysis tracked monthly demand among future coders, a data point that will likely drive Python’s enduring popularity.

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