Emerging technologies like AI, data science and machine learning are all about working with intelligent models that need good algorithms to run. For instance, logistic regression or support vector machines.To understand these algorithms and how they work, one must be adept at programming languages.

Here, we discuss 11 crucial programming languages for data scientists.

1| C/C++

C/C++ are usually the first languages one learns when entering the world of programming. These languages give learners insights into the basics of programming and how it works. In machine learning and data science, libraries and frameworks are essential to tackle complex computational tasks. Popular languages like C and C++ have a number of interesting libraries that makes it easy and accessible for data scientists to work on complex computational projects. 

2| Julia

Introduced in 2015, Julia is one of the popular languages ideal for data science, scientific computing, parallel computing, data mining, machine learning, among others. This language uses multiple dispatches as a paradigm and can be used as a general-purpose programming language where you can easily code and write software in the application domains. 

3| Java

Java is one of the oldest languages used for various enterprise development purposes. As one of the oldest languages, it comes with a great number of libraries and tools for ML and data science. Java has a number of libraries and tools — the popular ones being Weka, Java-ML, Deeplearning4j — which are leveraged to solve most of the cutting edge machine learning problems. Also, Java is 25 times faster than Python.

4| JavaScript

JavaScript is a lightweight and interpreted programming language used to create web sites and applications. Using JavaScript in data science and machine learning has several advantages. For instance, the language provides maximum security compared to popular languages like Python. It is a cross-platform programming language to quickly develop and deploy applications in any operating system.

5| Lisp

Programming language like Common Lisp helps in creating flexible computational models. Programs that analyse the sequence data, graph knowledge, and tabular data can be written easily, and can be made to work together naturally in Lisp. The language allows the computer program to examine, introspect, as well as modify its own structure and behavior at runtime, making it ideal for artificial intelligence and machine learning applications. This language is suitable for bioinformatics and computational biology research.

6| MATLAB

Developed by MathWorks, MATLAB is a multi-paradigm programming language and numeric computing environment for complex computations. As data science is all about large swathes of data and numbers, MATLAB is ideal to gain insights from the data and visualise them. MATLAB code can be integrated with other languages, enabling developers to deploy algorithms as well as applications within web, enterprise, and production systems.

7| Python

Python is a general-purpose coding language. The main reason why this language is so popular among the developers is its plethora of libraries and frameworks, which help in performing complex computational tasks. The language has interfaces to many system calls and libraries, as well as to various window systems, and is extensible in C or C++.

8| R

R is a popular statistical language that has gained much traction over the last few years when it comes to processes of data analytics and visualisations. With better data visualisation techniques, this programming language offers an essential role in statistical methods. The language can be used for effective data analysis and gain meaningful insights from it.

9| SQL

SQL or Structured Query Language has become one of the go-to languages for the aspiring data scientists. Most organisations use this language for analysing the tons of raw and unstructured data. The language is used for both data management and data analysis. Due to the speed advantages of SQL, recruiters expect developers to be proficient in it.

10| Scala

Scala or SCAlable LAnguage is a Java-like programming language designed to express common programming patterns in a concise, elegant, and type-safe way. The language is excellent for large-scale projects. It provides a lightweight syntax for defining anonymous functions and supports higher-order functions as well as allows functions to be nested apart from supporting multiple parameter lists. 

11| SAS

SAS, previously known as the Statistical Analysis System is a popular programming language that provides users with a host of product components, including asset performance analytics, analytics for IoT, decision making, and more. One of the best features of this language is allowing data in any format, ranging from SAS tables to Excel worksheets. SAS can also manage and manipulate data to obtain important information. 

The post Top Programming Languages For Data Scientists In 2021 appeared first on Artificial Intelligence.

Education giant O’Reilly has released data about its online platform which highlights some interesting software development trends.

The headline finding is that Python continues to be the programming language with the most interest.

Given the growth in topics relating to Python such as AI – and the language often considered the best to pick up for new developers – it’ll perhaps come of little surprise to hear of its popularity.

O’Reilly highlights that Python interest has surged a further 27 percent over a year which itself saw record demand for learning materials relating to the language.

Scikit-learn, Python’s machine learning library, remains the leader in usage with 11 percent year-over-year growth. PyTorch, an ML framework used for deep learning, increased by an incredible 159 percent.

Mike Loukides, VP of Emerging Technology Content at O’Reilly, said:

With the continued interest in Python is surprising no-one, if we delve a little deeper into O’Reilly’s research we can find some arguably more interesting trends.

Python remains the most popular language but JavaScript grew 40 percent, C increased 12 percent, and C++ is up 10 percent year-on-year. Java, however, decreased three percent.

While still low in overall usage, Rust logged the most growth in the 18 observed languages with a whopping 94 percent increase:

When it comes to web development, the React framework dominates usage while also continuing to post strong growth at 34 percent year-on-year. Angular takes second place and is growing at a rate of 10 percent to defy claims that it’s dying. Node.js rounds out the top three with a 15 percent growth rate.

The popularity of the leading frameworks isn’t surprising but it’s something of a shock to see Ruby on Rails top growth with a sudden surge of 77 percent following several years of relatively stagnant performance.

Interest in AI topics has surged considerably; which is sure to be contributing to Python’s popularity. AI itself grew 64 percent while ML increased 14 percent. TensorFlow maintains the lead in ML platform usage and logged a six percent interest growth over last year.

Cloud computing also remains a highly-popular subject with related queries up 41 percent. Interest in AWS continues to lead but only increased five percent compared to much larger increases in rival cloud giants like Microsoft Azure (up 136%) and Google Cloud (up 84%).

The post O’Reilly: Python leads languages, React for web development, and ML/AI interest grows appeared first on Artificial Intelligence.

By Hari Krishnan Nair

In 2020, the sudden global rise of digital-first business solutions led to a spike in demand for programming talent that can build and customise these solutions as per the need of organisations. According to industry estimates, there are close to 85,000 vacant roles for coders across companies. Looking at this scenario, it is the best time for students as well as professionals to gain fluency in key programming languages to build a successful career in 2021.

How to choose the right programming language?

For freshers and graduates, picking the right programming language is a stepping stone to ensure steady growth in their professional life. Each programming language is designed for a specific purpose and has its own merits and demerits. Here are three parameters that are essential in decision-making towards a language of choice.

1. Job opportunities available in the chosen language: Professionals equipped with such skills should be able to command great career opportunities in leading roles like software application engineer, computer system engineers, web developers, data analyst, business intelligence analyst, amongst others, with sizable remunerations.

2. Uptick in popularity of chosen languages: The choice of the programming language should be mainstream and firmly established in the software development industry.

3. Career goals: Gaining fluency in these programming skills becomes important if the learner is looking to carve out a career in digital competencies like data science, analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Here is the list of top programming languages that will be in demand amongst employers in 2021.

Python: It is one of the most rapidly growing and versatile languages as it contains a plethora of libraries that cater to different roles. It is considered easy to use as is interpreter-based and has high levels of readability. Indeed, a job search portal ranked it as the third-most profitable programming language in the world. The average salary of a Python developer in India with 2-4 years of experience is around Rs 5 lakh.

Java: The existence of Java dates way before Python. It continues to be a popular choice in large organisations like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, IBM, HCL and Cognizant. The language is known to be extremely stable and is extensively used for enterprise-scale web, mobile and desktop application development as well as big data applications. Learners can command popular roles like junior developer, architect, Java web developer, Java Android developer and Java EE developer after equipping themselves with such skills, with a median salary ranging from Rs 3-11 lakh per annum.

R: It is one of the best programming languages to learn as it is a comprehensive statistical analysis language that encourages developers to initiate new ideas. The flexibility of usage allows R to be used on massive datasets at various organisational levels. It offers an excellent framework in the fields of data science and analytics, machine learning, statistical computing and graphics. The average base salary of a data analyst with R skills in India is around Rs 5 lakh per annum. The maximum salary that professionals can earn in this profile is around 9.7 lakh per annum. KPMG, Amazon, EY, Honeywell, Dell and Wells Fargo are some companies that are using this language to code.

PHP: Created in 1990, PHP is an open-source programming language that is considered essential amongst web developers. This language is used to build more than 80% of websites on the internet. Some of the most popular websites like Yahoo and Facebook are built on PHP. The basic average salary of a PHP developer in India can be Rs 6 lakh per year.

Swift: It’s an open-source, easy-to-learn and general-purpose programming language developed by Apple in July 2010. It requires fewer coding skills compared with other programming languages, and can be used with IBM Swift Sandbox and IBM Bluemix. With a few years of experience, Swift developers can earn nearly Rs 11 lakh per annum.

Kotlin: It’s a statically-typed, general-purpose programming language introduced by JetBrains in 2011. It is sponsored by Google and was announced as one of the official languages for Android development in 2017. The language is majorly used in developing Android apps, web applications, desktop applications, and server-side application development. Developers with relevant skills and some experience can command salaries of Rs 8-10 lakh per annum. Almost every company working in mobile app development prefers hiring developers who can write apps in Kotlin for Android.

The post Programming languages: What you must ace in 2021 appeared first on Artificial Intelligence.

Programming language Python continues to dominate among developers, according to the June TIOBE Index. Python reached an all-time high on the index with an 8.5% rating. While it still falls behind Java (15%) and C (13.3%), if it continues to grow at the same rapid pace, Python will likely replace both Java and C within the next three to four years, becoming the most popular programming language in the world.

The TIOBE Index estimates the popularity of programming languages worldwide based on results from major search engines, including Google, Bing, Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube, and Baidu. While it is not a perfect measure, its rankings are broadly in line with others, TechRepublic’s Nick Heath noted.

The index is not meant to rate the best programming language, but rather to check whether a developer’s programming skills are up to date, or what language should be adopted for a project.

Python’s rise in popularity is due to a number of factors, including the explosion of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and data science in the enterprise, and the large developer community around it.

Python is also relatively easy to learn, and attracts many newcomers in the development field, the index noted. While Java can be too verbose for beginners, and C requires explicit memory management from the start, Python is much simpler.

The post 10 most popular programming languages: Why Python will replace C and Java appeared first on Artificial Intelligence.