R was mostly used in the academic area in the past; today, it has applications across industries and large companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Airbnb, among others. Due to an enormous number of researchers, scientists, and statisticians using it, R has an extensive and active community where new technologies and ideas are presented and communicated regularly.
3. GENERAL-PURPOSE PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
Programming languages are used to solve a variety of data problems. We have explained R and statistical programming; now, we will focus on general ones that use letters, numbers, and symbols to create programs and require formal syntax used by programmers. They’re often called text-based programs because you must write software that will solve a problem. Examples include C#, Java, PHP, Ruby, Julia, and Python, among others on the market. Here we will present Python as one of the best tools for data analysts with coding knowledge.
PYTHON
KEY FEATURES:
- An open-source solution that has simple coding processes and syntax, so it’s fairly easy to learn
- Integration with other languages such as C/C++, Java, PHP, C#, etc.
- The advanced analysis processes through machine learning and text mining.
Python is extremely accessible to code compared to other popular languages such as Java, and its syntax is relatively easy to learn, making this tool popular among users looking for an open-source solution and simple coding processes. In data analysis, Python is used for data crawling, cleaning, modeling, and constructing analysis algorithms based on business scenarios. One of the best features is its user-friendliness: programmers don’t need to remember the system's architecture nor handle the memory – Python is considered a high-level language not subject to the computer’s local processor.
Another noticeable feature of Python is its portability. Users can run the code on several operating systems without making any changes, so writing completely new code is unnecessary. This makes Python a highly portable language since programmers can run it on Windows and macOS. An extensive number of modules, packages, and libraries make Python a respected and usable language across industries, with companies such as Spotify, Netflix, Dropbox, and Reddit as the most popular ones that use this language in their operations. With text mining and machine learning features, Python is becoming a respected authority for advanced analysis processes.