Python App Development - What Can You Build in Python

Python is so good that, instead of describing what it can do, it’s actually faster to say what Python can’t do. Python is good for a little bit of everything.

According to Stack Overflow, Python is the fastest-growing programming language in the world, and it will continue to grow even faster. It’s already well-recognized as a very universal, versatile, stable, and easy to learn programming language.
As a high-level general-purpose programming language, Python can be applied to many different classes of problems. It should fit most application requirements. It is also relatively easy to find Python outsourcing vendors.

Python is a go-to technology in the most profitable and dynamic industries, such as finance and FinTech. This programming language is used for the development of:

• analytics tools operating on large datasets for quantitative finance (Iwoca, Holvi)

• banking software, e.g. mobile banking apps and platforms (Venmo, Stripe, Zopa, Affirm, Robinhood) or ATM solutions

• algorithmic trading systems (Quantopian, Quantconnect, Zipline, Backtrader, or IBPy)
• cryptocurrency solutions (Anaconda, Dash, enigma, ZeroNet, koinim, crypto-signal).

With Python, you can create a simple blockchain solution with fewer than 50 lines of code. This is possible because the language is so simple and minimalistic. There are also many free ready-to-use Python packages for blockchain.

Web development/software development

First of all, code written in Python is very easy to read. Python is well-known for letting you develop quickly with much less code than other languages. It also integrates really well with other languages.

The advantages mentioned above are a catalyst for the growth of the vibrant community. The flexibility and ingenious design attract the most talented engineers to the global community of Python developers. As a result, everyone can use open-source libraries for web development, game development, or machine learning for free.
By building software with Python, you not only use one of the best technologies available, but you can also interact and reach out for help to some of the best engineers in the world.
Last, but not least - there is the Django framework, which makes Python software development smooth. If Django was good enough for Instagram, it’s good enough for the rest of us.

On the downside, Python, being an interpreted language, can perform slower than other popular technologies.
It's also not the best solution for multi-threading. That's why at Netguru, we often use multiprocessing programs instead of multithreaded ones.
Finally, Android and iOS don’t support Python as a native programming language, which makes mobile app development a little more tricky. The problem can be solved with handy frameworks, such as Kivy.

Audio/Video applications

There is an increasing amount of audio/video content in the web, and Python can help you with analyzing it. There are some libraries, like Librosa or pyAudioAnalysis, which can automatically analyze audio content.
With PyLivestream it’s possible to streams to one or multiple streaming sites simultaneously, using pure object-oriented Python and FFmpeg. You can use it to stream to Facebook Live, YouTube Live, Periscope, Twitch, Ustream, Vimeo, and more.

Console applications

Console Applications, or Command-line applications, are computer programs designed to be used from the command line or a shell. This kind of apps has been in use since the first computer was built. One of the best languages to develop that kind of program is Python. Why? Łukasz Kuczyński, Software Engineer at Volvo IT, explains:

„Python is a language known for having REPL (Read–Eval–Print Loop), that makes it possible to evaluate it and just play with its possibilities. So it would be strange if there was no backing for console apps. And there is indeed”.

There are plenty of free Python libraries or modules that will help you to build a command line app. We have basic IO libraries, so that you can read and write to standard IO. We have the capability to parse arguments and create console help text out-of-the-box.
For more sophisticated usage, we even more advanced console libraries enabling writing fully-fledged console apps.

Game development

Python is not well-known as a game development language, but there are many great games made with it, such as EVE online. Battlefield 2 uses Python for all of its addons and a lot of its functionality, World of Tanks uses Python for most of its features, and Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean was written using the Panda3d game engine).
Python is one of the most popular programming languages today, so there are good tools and libraries available for game development. Pygame & Python will let you develop and test very quickly. Python is also great for rapid game prototyping.

What’s more, Python works well with other programming languages, which makes it very valuable. For example, you can use the Panda3D engine to write 3D games in Python.
If Python performance is an issue for you, then use Cython - a superset of the Python programming language designed to achieve C-like performance with code that is written mostly in Python. It combines the ease of Python with the speed of native code.
What’s more, Python is outstanding for building game design tools that simplify many tasks, for example level design or creating dialog trees.

System administration applications

Python is also good for developing system administration apps. With Python you can easily connect to your operating system with the „OS” module which allows you to interface with the operating system that Python is running on. All of the IO operations are accessible, including easy reading and writing to the file system. Lots of databases and applications have connectors implemented in them already, so you only need to import correct the one.

Machine learning

Machine learning means to „use data to make a machine make intelligent decisions”. It’s a way of “learning” which enables an algorithm to evolve. It’s a way to recognize patterns in your data.
Data which is everywhere; it’s large, raw and complicated. Python has a great number of machine learning libraries available for free, like  pandas or scikit, which can deal with it very quickly and efficiently. They are constantly being developed, and have a nearly flat learning curve, which means that if you have some very basic knowledge of Python, you can just use them and implement your app on top. What’s more, they are free to use under the GNU license.

Wrapping up

• With Python, you can find a library for basically anything you could imagine.
• What’s more, those libraries are developed by some of the best IT guys in the world.
• If add versatility, ease of use, and flexibility, you will understand why it’s so good for development.
• What’s more, development with Python is fast, so everybody can save time and money. There are plenty of reasons to use Python for application development and your enterprise software.