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by giantg2 381 days ago
There seem to be relatively few C/C++ jobs, so they went with what the market wanted (Java). They still exposed you to other other types of languages such as assembly, JS, and even COBOL. I really don't think going with python except for an into/cross-major class is a good idea since it's so simple and there aren't that many jobs with it.
2 comments

>I really don't think going with python except for an into/cross-major class is a good idea since it's so simple and there aren't that many jobs with it.

Python's ecosystem is massive and there are lots of use cases[0], basically data analysis, machine learning, deep learning and all the rest of AI run on Python.

[0] https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/keep-bbsk/AFgXFlJPnxraSopK...

Image that I shared was from my Google Keep account and apparently it was set private afterwards by Google so don't click the link....here is the alternative link: https://media.springernature.com/full/springer-static/image/...
The ecosystem is massive, but most CS jobs when looking at job boards either don't use it or use it just as a secondary (similar to SQL).

If you're saying that all of AI runs on python, then what's the problem here? Implicitly students will need to learn python as part of their AI class.

I recently heard someone say "I've never had a job that didn't involve at least some Python". I think that's true of almost all computer science jobs in the current market.

Python is the primary language for scientific computing and the secondary language for a good number of other tasks.

Yeah, but I'd work that in the same way it's actually used - as a secondary language in one of the data related classes, such as a database course where you learn SQL, then have the students do calculations on in python. Or do it in one of the course that is used for introduction or non-CS students minoring in CS (like business majors). The real thing is that if you learn other stuff like Java, Python is super easy to pick up and doesn't need to be formally taught.
I work at a fintech company doing Spring Boot, and the only python I've seen here is in some CI scripts (which I can see but do not have access to edit, we have a team that maintains CI). Everything else is Java, Kotlin, or JS for some websites, that's about it. I've heard the AI teams use python, but while pretty much all the devs in my team know python, we don't use it at all.
Similar here. One exception is that we had some Lambdas written in Python. Now there is a push to replace them with Go because of the potential money savings from faster execution times.
>I recently heard someone say "I've never had a job that didn't involve at least some Python".

Tell me you've been in the field for less than 10 years without telling me.

Python is a joke language with a joke name. The only reason it ever caught on for AI is that someone wrote a few good math libraries for it in the 2000s, and its' rise is entirely incidental to that.

I was taught Python in class twenty years ago. I use/used it for systems roles. I don't use it as much anymore but your comment is complete nonsense.
Are you trying to get banned from hackernews? You can't go around calling peoples comments complete nonsense, you called me full of shit last week. Do you even like this community? We try really hard to be civil to each other in this place. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html