Pervasive Python | Technology Radar
Python is a language that keeps popping up in interesting places. Its ease of use as a general programming language, combined with its strong foundation in mathematical and scientific computing has historically led to its grassroots adoption by the academic and research communities. More recently, industry trends around AI commoditization and applications, combined with the maturity of Python 3, have helped bring new communities into the Python fold.
This edition of the Radar features a few Python libraries that have helped boost the ecosystem, including Scikit-learn in the machine learning domain; TensorFlow, Keras, and Airflow for smart data flow graphs; and spaCy which implements natural language processing to help empower conversationally aware APIs. Increasingly, we see Python bridging the gap between the scientists and engineers within organizations, loosening past prejudice against their favorite tools.
Architectural approaches such as microservices and containers have eased the execution of Python in production environments. Engineers can now deploy and integrate specialized Python code created by scientists through language- and technology-agnostic APIs. This fluidity is a great step toward a consistent ecosystem between researchers and engineers, in contrast to the de facto practice of translating specialized languages such as R to the production environments.