A number of organizations are using Python these days to perform major tasks but we don't hear about them because organizations are usually reserved about giving out their trade secrets. However, Python is still there making a big difference in the way organizations work and toward keeping the bottom line from bottoming out.
Here are some major ways in which Python is used commercially that will make it easier to argue for using Python in your own organization.
1. Corel and Python: PaintShop Pro is a product that many people have used over the years to grab screenshots, modify their pictures, draw new images, and perform a lot of other graphics-oriented tasks. The amazing thing about this product is that it relies heavily on Python scripting. In other words, to automate tasks in PaintShop Pro, you need to know Python.
2. D-Link and Python: Upgrading firmware over a network connection can be problematic, and D-Link was encountering a situation in which each upgrade was tying up a machine — a poor use of resources. In addition, some upgrades required additional work because of problems with the target device. Using Python to create a multithreaded application to drive updates to the devices allows one machine to service multiple devices, and a new methodology allowed by Python reduces the number of reboots to just one after that new firmware is installed. D-Link chose Python over other languages, such as Java, because it provides an easier-to-use serial communication code.
3. Eve-Online and Python: Games are a major business because so many people enjoy playing them. Eve-Online is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) that relies heavily on Python for both the client and server ends of the game. It actually relies on a Python variant named StacklessPython, which is important because you encounter these variants all the time when working with Python. Think of them as Python on steroids. These variants have all the advantages of Python, plus a few extra perks. The thing to take away from this particular company is that running an MMORPG takes major horsepower, and the company wouldn’t have chosen Python unless it were actually up to the task.
4. ForecastWatch.com and Python: If you have ever wondered whether someone reviews the performance of your weatherman, look no further than ForecastWatch.com. This company compares the forecasts produced by thousands of weather forecasters each day against actual climatological data to determine their accuracy. The resulting reports are used to help improve weather forecasts. In this case, the software used to make the comparisons is written in pure Python because it comes with standard libraries useful in collecting, parsing, and storing data from online sources. In addition, Python’s enhanced multithreading capabilities makes it possible to collect the forecasts from around 5,000 online sources each day. Most important of all, the code is much smaller than would have been needed by other languages such as Java or PHP.
5. Frequentis and Python: The next time you fly somewhere, you might be relying on Python to get you to the ground safely again. It turns out that Frequentis is the originator of TAPTools, a software product that is used for air traffic control in many airports. This particular tool provides updates on the weather and runway conditions to air traffic controllers.
6. Honeywell and Python: Documenting large systems is expensive and error prone. Honeywell uses Python to perform automated testing of applications, but it also uses Python to control a cooperative environment between applications used to generate documentation for the applications. The result is that Python helps generate the reports that form the documentation for the setup.
7. HP and Python: Finding what you need on a corporate network is difficult. Most organizations implement a custom search application or use off-the-shelf software to ensure that employees can find the information they need quickly. In this case, the search software began life as Infoseek, changed names to Verity Ultraseek, and is finally known today as HP Autonomy. The use of Python makes it easy to modify the search engine to meet specific needs. In addition, Python provides smoother multithreaded operation than some other languages, such as Java, do.
8. Industrial Light & Magic and Python: In this case, you find Python used in the production process for scripting complex, computer graphic-intensive films. Originally, Industrial Light & Magic relied on Unix shell scripting, but it was found that this solution just couldn’t do the job. Python was compared to other languages, such as Tcl and Perl, and chosen because it’s an easier-to-learn language that the organization can implement incrementally. In addition, Python can be embedded within a larger software system as a scripting language, even if the system is written in a language such as C/C++. It turns out that Python can successfully interact with these other languages in situations in which some languages can’t.
9. Philips and Python: Automation is essential in the semiconductor industry, so imagine trying to coordinate the effort of thousands of robots. After a number of solutions, Philips decided to go with Python for the sequencing language (the language that tells what steps each robot should take). The low-level code is written in C++, which is another reason to use Python, because Python works well with C++.
10. United Space Alliance and Python: This company provides major support to NASA for various projects, such as the space shuttle. One of its projects is to create Workflow Automation System (WAS), an application designed to manage NASA and other third-party projects. The setup uses a central Oracle database as a repository for information. Python was chosen over languages such as Java and C++ because it provides dynamic typing and pseudo-code–like syntax and it has an interpreter. The result is that the application is developed faster, and unit testing each piece is easier.
11. Dropbox and Python
Who doesn’t love Dropbox? The company managed to take something deceivingly simple (storing stuff online), scale it to an incredible level, create a product that’s great to use, and make tonnes of money in the process. Dropbox, currently valued at somewhere around $8bn, uses Python for a lot of things, including their polished and friendly desktop client.
12. Instagram and Python
Although Instagram’s tech stack has evolved quite a lot since their humble beginnings, there would be no Instagram today without Python. Before the image-sharing company got acquired for huge amounts of cash by Facebook, it was just a fairly simple website built on Django. For the uninitiated, Django is a high-level Python web framework. Its creators boast that it’s ‘ridiculously fast, reassuringly secure and exceedingly scalable’, and there must be something to it. In fact, Instagram still uses Django today. If it’s good enough for the multi-billion-dollar social media wonder, it’s probably good enough for the rest of us.
13. IBM and Python
Remember the old bromide saying that ‘nobody ever got fired for buying IBM’? Although it might not actually be a compliment if you think about it for a while, there’s no arguing that IBM was – and in many ways, still is – a tech powerhouse. From old-time mainframes, to the still-beloved model M keyboard and ThinkPads, to today’s Watson – the company has been contributing to the tech landscape for decades. What’s their relationship with Python? Well, you can deploy a Python web server on IBM Bluemix; there’s a Python SDK for Watson (IBM’s big data and AI offering); IBM even published a free Python tutorial for autodidacts. If even IBM, the ultimate tech dinosaur, uses Python, then there must be something to it.
14. Netflix and Python
What Spotify did for music, Netflix did for video. Having started as a DVD-by-mail service, they’re now a high-tech leader, providing streaming video content to hundreds of millions of subscribers. One of Netflix’s strengths is its powerful recommendation and analytics engine, allowing the company not just to provide you with suggestions, but also predict what kind of original content they should order. What’s the engine based on? You guessed correct. It’s Python.
15. Spotify and Python
Spotify, the music streaming platform, is a modern mainstay. Thanks to Spotify, long gone are the days of chasing down mp3s on Limewire or Soulseek, looking for torrents on obscure invite-only websites, or listening to low-quality rips on YouTube. And, guess what? Spotify loves Python. They use it for the backend, analytics and much more – and, if you’ve ever used Spotify, you know that the results are great.
16. Reddit and Python
The self-appointed ‘front page of the internet’ is everyone’s favourite source of dank memes, cat videos, and tight-knit community interactions alike. Although it used to have quite a reputation for uptime issues, the company’s now on the straight and narrow, with its coffers full of VC money, a growing engineering team, and hundreds of millions of users visiting it every day. Why does Reddit love Python? For what it does best – simplicity and tons of ready-to-use libraries.
17. Facebook and Python
Facebook, although it’s got some bad press due to its nosy habits and robotic CEO, is one of the biggest and most important companies in history. With over a billion active users, Facebook is practically synonymous with social media. The company is huge, and so is its tech stack, which includes a lot of languages and technologies. However, according to an official blog post from Facebook, Python is responsible for a solid 21% of Facebook’s infrastructure’s codebase. Given the sky-high requirements of this tech giant, 21% is definitely nothing to sneeze at.
18. Google and Python
Google is so huge and omnipresent that it’s difficult to say anything about the company that wasn’t said a thousand times before. They have their fingers in everything – video and music streaming, email, search, advertising, self-driving cars, hardware, and much more. And what’s one of their engineering mottos? “Python where we can, C++ where we must”. Besides multiple components, libraries and so on, basically all of Youtube is written in Python. You know, the biggest video streaming platform in the world. If that’s not enough of a recommendation for you, nothing will be.
19. Preen.Me and Python
Preen.Me is an Israeli fashion retail startup aiming to transform the way people shop for beauty products today. Because the project implies intense data analytics and visualization, the project team chose Python over other general purpose languages for primary web app coding.
20. Quora and Python
Quora development team didn't want to use PHP from the very beginning to avoid getting stuck on it for legacy reasons (exactly what happened to Facebook) and to avoid using Microsoft stack. Having briefly considered C#, Scala and Java, they opted for Python because "it was fast enough for most of what we need to do." They also had confidence in Python's ecosystem development potential and thought it'd be good for the life of their codebase.
As you can see, Python is not just a way to make a quick and dirty
prototype or a ‘teaching language’ for beginners. It’s a powerful tool
used by multi-billion-dollar corporations and extremely talented
developers around the world. Basically every FAANG company uses it, and
for very good reasons.
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