Python Programming Language :: Who uses Python?


	Who uses Python? I mean other than sysadmins, programmers, and web-site developers? I have heard of some DBAs who use a lot of python. I suppose some scientists. I think python is used in bioinformatics. I think some math and physics people use python. I suppose some people use python to learn "programming" in general. Python would do well as a teaching language. I would think that python would be a good language for data analysis. Anything else? Finance? Web-analytics? SEO? Digital art? On Jun 4, 2:37 pm, walterbyrd <walterb@iname.com> wrote: > I mean other than sysadmins, programmers, and web-site developers? > I have heard of some DBAs who use a lot of python. > I suppose some scientists. I think python is used in bioinformatics. I > think some math and physics people use python. > I suppose some people use python to learn "programming" in general. > Python would do well as a teaching language. > I would think that python would be a good language for data analysis. > Anything else? Finance? Web-analytics? SEO? Digital art? We use it for login scripts, locking down PCs, automating backups, GIS, and more. Mike On 2007-06-04, walterbyrd <walterb@iname.com> wrote: > Anything else? Finance? Web-analytics? SEO? Digital art? Electrical engineering. It's pretty handy for writing programs to talk to embedded systems using various protocols/interface (async-serial, ethernet, etc.). It's also good for analyzing communications, analyzing performance tests for analog instruments, and so on. -- Grant Edwards grante Yow! Edwin Meese made me at wear CORDOVANS!! visi.com On Jun 4, 3:37 pm, walterbyrd <walterb@iname.com> wrote: > I mean other than sysadmins, programmers, and web-site developers? > I have heard of some DBAs who use a lot of python. > I suppose some scientists. I think python is used in bioinformatics. I > think some math and physics people use python. > I suppose some people use python to learn "programming" in general. > Python would do well as a teaching language. > I would think that python would be a good language for data analysis. > Anything else? Finance? Web-analytics? SEO? Digital art? Presumably most of the above are "programmers" when they're writing programs in Python, right? It's a general purpose language that can be used for a very wide range of domains. FWIW, I do use it for digital art (music visualization). It's excellent for data analysis (I've done everything from stats on lines in an SQL database to mining flat text files of data for statistical projections of MLB baseball player performance). I know a couple of people who sell a double-entry accounting system written in Python, which is presumably "finance". Web analytics is very common (I've seen several such projects). I know at least one group using python as a control language in embedded systems (at least at one point a few years back they had opted for Stackless, but Python nonetheless); they're doing some cool home-automation style stuff. I've also written my window manager, various text editor extensions, numerous web applications, one-off data analysis scripts, several GUI applications, etc in Python (or mostly Python). The apps I've worked on range from one-offs at the command line to midrange scripts to multiple-hundreds-of-thousands of lines of code projects worked on by many developers. "walterbyrd" <walterb@iname.com> wrote in message news:1180985830.288414.208850@q69g2000hsb.googlegroups.com... >[...] programmers, and web-site developers? Broadly speaking, everyone who uses python programs in it and may thus be considered a "programmer". Python is a fully-fledged programming language and as such used for loads of things, like any other language. Thomas Jollans I'm a Technical Artist at a videogame developer. The TAs here are using Python more and more for our development needs. Although I'd say our primary use is on the tools and data-mining front... only indirectly relating to creation of digital art. It's closer to why a programmer or sysadmin would use Python, I suppose. -- Adam Pletcher Senior Technical Artist Volition / THQ www.volition-inc.com - Hide quoted text - > -----Original Message----- > From: python-list-bounces+adam=volition-inc.@python.org > [mailto:python-list-bounces+adam=volition-inc.@python.org] > On Behalf Of walterbyrd > Sent: Monday, June 04, 2007 2:37 PM > To: python-l@python.org > Subject: Who uses Python? > I mean other than sysadmins, programmers, and web-site developers? > I have heard of some DBAs who use a lot of python. > I suppose some scientists. I think python is used in > bioinformatics. I think some math and physics people use python. > I suppose some people use python to learn "programming" in general. > Python would do well as a teaching language. > I would think that python would be a good language for data analysis. > Anything else? Finance? Web-analytics? SEO? Digital art? > -- > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list I use it for processing GIS data (ALOT), building data harvesting apps that slurp data into MySQL/SQLServer from text files (ALOT), batch processing of daily mindless tasks like copying files and backups, and filing/cataloging/EXIF-IPTC metadata editing on digital photos - to name a few. I took Mark Lutz's python course last year and he summed it up with "Anything you can do on a computer, you can do with Python". I mean other than sysadmins, programmers, and web-site developers? I have heard of some DBAs who use a lot of python. I suppose some scientists. I think python is used in bioinformatics. I think some math and physics people use python. I suppose some people use python to learn "programming" in general. Python would do well as a teaching language. I would think that python would be a good language for data analysis. Anything else? Finance? Web-analytics? SEO? Digital art? >> I use for GIS Data automation in the backend and gradually replacing all old VBA application with the Python scripts. walterbyrd wrote: > Anything else? Finance? Web-analytics? SEO? Digital art? I played with NodeBox a little while ago: http://nodebox.net/code/index.php/Home "NodeBox is a Mac OS X application that lets you create 2D visuals (static, animated or interactive) using Python programming code and export them as a PDF or a QuickTime movie. NodeBox is free and well-documented." Pretty trippy stuff. Thomas Jollans wrote: > Broadly speaking, everyone who uses python programs in it and may thus be > considered a "programmer". A woman from a job agency 'phoned me up the other day, and asked me if I was any good with "algortihms". I told her that all programs are algorithms, so the question didn't make that much sense. Needless to say, I wasn't offered an interview ;) Mark Carter wrote: > A woman from a job agency 'phoned me up the other day, and asked me if I > was any good with "algortihms". I told her that all programs are > algorithms, so the question didn't make that much sense. What does your "answer" have to do with the qustion, I wonder? She asked if you were good with algorithms to which you replied that all programs are algorithms. Maybe so, but that's not what she asked. The question makes perfect sense, however your answer doesn't, unless you also added something along the lines of "And since I'm good with programs I am good with algorithms". /W (these days appearantly standing for "What a nitpicker" ;)) On Mon, 04 Jun 2007 12:37:10 -0700, walterbyrd <walterb@iname.com> wrote: >I mean other than sysadmins, programmers, and web-site developers? >I have heard of some DBAs who use a lot of python. >I suppose some scientists. I think python is used in bioinformatics. I >think some math and physics people use python. >I suppose some people use python to learn "programming" in general. >Python would do well as a teaching language. >I would think that python would be a good language for data analysis. >Anything else? Finance? Web-analytics? SEO? Digital art? I'm a hobbyist. No, that's not right - I run a course and I learnt the language writing a program to allocate tutors and students to tutorial groups over a three day course I run. I don't know what that makes me - and, no, I don't want any helpful answers! DaveM walterbyrd wrote: > Anything else? Finance? Web-analytics? SEO? Digital art? We're using Python for a computer-controlled railway simulation system at a german university. It consists of a rather large model railway network, constructed with realism concerning railway operations, coupled to realistic railway control centre technology. Uses are education of students, training of railway employees, teaching of railway basics to career changers and managers, and simulation of new operating procedures. Python (2.5.1) is used here for - the main database where all states are kept (signal aspects, given and actual turnout states, track occupation ...). It's a simple binary protocol using TCP; the server maintains string:int pairs in a Python dict. It's made with Twisted and running under twistd. - the automatic drive controlling software of the model trains. It listens for changes of signals and track occupation and controls the model trains using a commercial digital model railroad controller attached to /dev/ttyS0. Also using Twisted/twistd, and pyserial. - various helper scripts and little servers for small functional units (tramway reverser, level crossings) Momentarily, I'm working on a program that simulates a german relais rail control centre of a certain type (also using Twisted). We already have it in C++, but it's difficult to maintain and needs a rewrite because of various bugs. Starting to use combined wxPython/Twisted apps in the near future is likely. We're mainly using Debian Sarge as OS. pylint is also recently used to check the code. Right now, we use Python for approx. 2 years. Other languages used are C, C++, and Perl (ugh :) ), for other core applications and the microcontrollers (interfacing with the railway components). We mainly have "low-end" computers (100-800 MHz), but the performance suffices absolutely. The source code is maintained using Subversion. Regards, Bjrn -- BOFH excuse #404: Sysadmin accidentally destroyed pager with a large hammer. I went through my who undergrad experience without touching python (I've hear of it, but never used it). Now starting to work in an Research Lab Seismic processing of data, we use it all the time! That and Madagascar pyton interface. ~code walterbyrd wrote: > I mean other than sysadmins, programmers, and web-site developers? > I have heard of some DBAs who use a lot of python. > I suppose some scientists. I think python is used in bioinformatics. I > think some math and physics people use python. > I suppose some people use python to learn "programming" in general. > Python would do well as a teaching language. > I would think that python would be a good language for data analysis. > Anything else? Finance? Web-analytics? SEO? Digital art? I use Python for my bioinformatics work, mainly in text analysis and transcriptome analysis. ML On Jun 4, 2:37 pm, walterbyrd <walterb@iname.com> wrote: I am using python for csound.. You can use it inside of csound as well as using it on csound files... python makes text files very easy... I have to say that the price was very good and that is very important because I don't get funding from anywhere. You can also get programmers at a good cost for simple problems when you get stuck... through getacoder.com I was offered a $10 bid to solve one (I fixed it befour the bid was finished though) http://www.stormpages.com/edexter/csound.html - Hide quoted text - > I mean other than sysadmins, programmers, and web-site developers? > I have heard of some DBAs who use a lot of python. > I suppose some scientists. I think python is used in bioinformatics. I > think some math and physics people use python. > I suppose some people use python to learn "programming" in general. > Python would do well as a teaching language. > I would think that python would be a good language for data analysis. > Anything else? Finance? Web-analytics? SEO? Digital art? "walterbyrd" <w@iname.com> wrote: > Anything else? Finance? Web-analytics? SEO? Digital art? Industrial control and alarm annunciation - Hendrik We use Python in our VOIP server. :-) Python is a very good script language and can be very easy to embed into our server. It is great! I tend to agree with some earlier poster that if you use Python you are, in a sense, a programmer :o) But seriously, we use Python for controlling fully automated logistics solutions (conveyors and stacker cranes), for generating PLC code etc etc. We are also about to start using FactoryCAD (a thingy from UGS to run on top af AutoCAD) in which we have "intelligent" objects. These objects have action code and FactoryCAD contains an embedded Python interpreter. Our mech engineers thus write (although a bit simple but still..) Python to make things work :o) We further have generators of mechanical assemblies in SolidEdge. We use a rule based approach and both the configuration files and the rule base are in Python. Our Mech engineers maintain that too. My two cent.. i use it for text mining, processing large text corpora for scientific purposes. i'm also working on some neat data mining tools written in python (called orange, in case someone's interested) walterbyrd je napisao/la: - Hide quoted text - > I mean other than sysadmins, programmers, and web-site developers? > I have heard of some DBAs who use a lot of python. > I suppose some scientists. I think python is used in bioinformatics. I > think some math and physics people use python. > I suppose some people use python to learn "programming" in general. > Python would do well as a teaching language. > I would think that python would be a good language for data analysis. > Anything else? Finance? Web-analytics? SEO? Digital art? montyphy@gmail.com wrote: > i use it for text mining, processing large text corpora for scientific > purposes. i'm also working on some neat data mining tools written in > python (called orange, in case someone's interested) Hi, I am very interested with your use of Python. I am into text mining as well. Perhaps we can communicate more on this... I am also interested in your data mining tools, orange... Care to give more details. Thanks in advance Maurice On 2007-06-04, walterbyrd <walterb@iname.com> wrote: > I mean other than sysadmins, programmers, and web-site > developers? I manage the database application, data integration, and reporting for a financial aid office, and I use Python every day. Though I only seldom have to write new programs or update my old ones. I use it to shuffle and sort important files around, to convert reports into formats necessary for various import and export functions, to reconcile data between database systems, and to maintain little text databases for various business processes. The only "programming language" I use more often is Excel (VLOOKUP and Pivot Tables specifically). Python can replace any individual Excel application, but I use Excel for a bunch of one-timers, for which I find it more convenient. Python enters the picture when I find something that I need to do frequently, and with similar data inputs and outputs. -- Neil Cerutti On Jun 5, 3:01 am, Maria R <Maria.Reinham@accalon.com> wrote: > I tend to agree with some earlier poster that if you use Python you > are, in a sense, a programmer :o) Yes, in a sense. But, in another sense, that is sort of like saying that people who post on message boards are "writers." I should have been more clear, when I posted "programmers" I meant "professional programmers" i.e. people who develop software applications for a living. I am getting the idea that most python "programmers" use python more like a tool, rather than as their primary specialization. In other words, python is usually not the primary specialization. I think this is different than other languages, such as Java, or even PHP. Few python users are specifically "python programmers" rather, they are data analysts, scientists, etc. who use python in the same way that some might use excel - as a tool. BTW: I am seriously impressed with the stuff that many here are doing with python. And I would like to thank those who responded to my post. - Hide quoted text - walterbyrd wrote: > On Jun 5, 3:01 am, Maria R <Maria.Reinham@accalon.com> wrote: > > I tend to agree with some earlier poster that if you use Python you > > are, in a sense, a programmer :o) > Yes, in a sense. But, in another sense, that is sort of like saying > that people who post on message boards are "writers." > I should have been more clear, when I posted "programmers" I meant > "professional programmers" i.e. people who develop software > applications for a living. > I am getting the idea that most python "programmers" use python more > like a tool, rather than as their primary specialization. In other > words, python is usually not the primary specialization. I think this > is different than other languages, such as Java, or even PHP. Good professional programmers don't have a single language. That's true even of Java programmers. PHP is an odd case; there are good PHP programmers, but there's also a large group of people who aren't really trained as programmers at all (despite writing PHP for a living) for whom it's the only language they kind-of know. The same thing exists in other languages, but in my experience it's a fair bit more common in the PHP world. > Few python users are specifically "python programmers" rather, they are > data analysts, scientists, etc. who use python in the same way that FWIW, the majority of my paid work day is spent developing Python code (or doing ancillary work common to all software projects--gathering requirements, design, testing, etc), and it's the 3rd job in a row (going back to 1999) where I've done a significant amount of Python coding for work. The prior two also involved a fair amount of C, Java, and Perl as well. I wouldn't call myself specifically a "Python programmer", but I wouldn't have called myself specifically a "C programmer" 10 years ago--and when I'm hiring, it's much more important to me to find a good programmer than to find a programmer who knows Python (or whatever other system is in use). Programming as a skill is largely independent of any single language, but that's not a Python-centric statement. In article <mailman.8709.1181026196.32031.python-l@python.org>, Hendrik van Rooyen <m@microcorp.co.za> wrote: > "walterbyrd" <w@iname.com> wrote: >> Anything else? Finance? Web-analytics? SEO? Digital art? >Industrial control and alarm annunciation . . . Python can be great in these roles. A couple of us launched <URL: http://www.engcorp.com/acf/RecentChanges > to promote co-operation in the area. While the Wiki has been moribund this year, it would take little to bring it alive again.