Who uses Python?

[walterbyrd]

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?

 

[kyosohma]

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

 

[Grant Edwards]

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.

 

[Adam Pletcher]

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.

 

[sjdevnull]

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.

 

[Thomas Jollans]

[...] 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

 

[supercooper]

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".

 

[Mark Carter]

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.

 

[Mark Carter]

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

 

[Wildemar Wildenburger]

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" )

 

[DaveM]

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

 

[Bjoern Schliessmann]

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,


Björn

 

[Cody Brown]

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

 

[Maurice LING]

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

 

[Eric_Dexter]

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

 

[Hendrik van Rooyen]

Anything else? Finance? Web-analytics? SEO? Digital art?

Industrial control and alarm annunciation

- Hendrik

 

[Hongtian]

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!

 

[Maria R]

I tend to agree with some earlier poster that if you use Python you
are, in a sense, a programmer )

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 )

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..

 

[montyphyton]

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:

 

[Maurice LING]

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