Job Security as a Python Developer: What If Python Goes Away? 😟🐍

Key Takeaways

hey there it's Dan Bader and I got another fantastic question from a reader of deb.org so the question is are all companies using python these days what if they want more C++ or Java developers so I guess the spirit of this question is about you know if I learn python now am I going to be locked into um am I going to be locked into this one-way Street and and I just can't get out and if python goes away you know in a decade or two decades or you know after that um what's what's going to happen like what does it mean in terms of job security and can I switch these tracks and super valid question obviously and this is something that I stressed out when I got into programming as well uh because well you know there's so many languages to choose from there's always new stats and like which is the most popular popular language and you know what is the language that most people use what is the language that most employers are looking for if you look at these stats um you know that just came out this year um python is actually doing fantastically great so this this is a pretty good indicator but you know the general question makes absolute sense because it's not always going to be like that right this is just something we have to face as much as I love Python and um as much as you love python eventually there's going to be better languages I mean this is how we make progress right like very few people ride to work on horses every day today because now we have like freely comfy cars we have public transportation and you know we have electric cars maybe soon self-driving cars so there's always this progress um that's being made and um there's just eventually going to be something much better than python nobody knows how long this is going to take personally I think just in terms of this the time scales involved here it's going to take a while for something that much better to come around where people are switching you know I feel like P python is still very much in its growth phase which is great if you're learning python these days um if you because you want to make a career out of it or if you want to learn how to program to eventually make some money off of it and not just as a hobby right so I I think python is doing great in that respect but still very valid question what's going to happen if if companies are looking for other kinds of developers that know other languages and So my answer is that I wouldn't worry too much about this so on the one hand specialization is is is a good thing you know if whether you're working as a freelancer or if you're um trying to find a job if you can come in and you can say hey I am your python person like I've been working with python for the last like X number of years I have these open source projects I know this stuff in and out if you hire me I'll save you a ton of money even though I'm not the cheapest person we're going to have success with this project and it will be a win-win for everybody involved right if if you're probably not going to say that but um that's the kind of the vibe and you give off and the impression you you create right and it's going to be true um obviously then specialization is great now of course the downside of the specialization is if we switch languages then a lot of that is not going to apply right or or so you might think because it turns out with software development and programming languages a lot of it you know the skills that you learn they're in part of course targeted and aimed at a specific language or maybe a specific framework but a lot of it is actually adaptable to other programming languages as well so what I've seen happen is that companies hire someone who they think is an experienced developer um over someone else that is um is maybe a beginner in a specific language right because fundamentally the the thinking there is that you can just train someone who is good and has a lot of knowledge about programming in general you know how do I solve a pro problem with a with any with a programming language um they you're going to be able to train them and bring them over to a new language and it can pick up a language like python relatively quickly you know like most I would say like if you're an experienced Java developer you can pick up the basic basics of python relatively quickly and then like you're going to spend maybe a couple of months to make your code uh what is called more pythonic where you're you're making it look like actual like you know python code and and that kind of goes with the spirit of python but you know to to make that jump it's going to be much faster than for someone to learn how to program and Learn Python at the same time so to a to a fairly large degree these skills are transferable from one programming Lang anguage to another and um this is why I would um this is what I'm you know I'm trying to take out some of take away some of the the the fear here in this question you know it's it's kind of loaded with that you know are all companies using python these days what if they want more C++ or Java developers okay if that happens and you want to work for those companies then you're you're going to train in those specific languages and um this is going to be of course a challenging time I mean it doesn't feel nice if you've been working on with a particular technology stack and then you have to retrain but I think that's just that's just how software development is the people who are really going to build successful careers and succeed with this stuff over the long term are the ones that are flexible and that have this mindset where they're thinking okay you know I love I really love working with python um right now but I know it's not the end all and eventually we're going to switch to something else that is better that doesn't make python any worse and it doesn't mean that you know we're all going to start learning Java right now but it's just a reality of it yeah you know and the earlier the sooner you can accept this mindset the better it will be for you long term because you're just going to have that flexibility and you're going to feel comfortable just saying okay you know I see the market is Shifting um the market is Shifting away from maybe what I already know so I need to learn more skills in another um in another um area there to be able to to uh remain employable or to get the kinds of jobs that I want you know and um with python it has a lot of momentum right now which I think is great because it's if once you have that momentum it kind of takes um it takes a long time for that to subseed you know and so a lot of people are going to be able to ride out this way for a really long time but um of course there will be new technologies that that you're going to have to pick up as part of your career you know um when uh when I started working for a web development company initially I didn't know much about JavaScript um and I learned it on the job and I was able to get relatively good at this stuff relatively quickly because I already know knew about all the programming principles right like once you've got that stuff down you can be very methodical about it right you can just ask around and be like hey what are the best books to learn um C++ given that I'm already an experienced programmer people going to give you great recommendations then you know you can ask around like hey what's the best linter that I should use to um check my C++ code for code style issues what is the best test Runner I should use you know you can just you you you're going to find the same kinds of tools um for any programming language out there like for most established programming languages anyway right and the same is true for like if you want to switch to JavaScript like you if you built a couple of Django apps and you know how to do web development with python which is in my opinion a fantastic way to learn the skill because python is just such an enjoyable language to work with and um it kind of reduces that barrier to entry um if you if you then need to switch to JavaScript well you can just you know search Google like what is the the equivalent of Jango in the JavaScript world and people are going to point you they're going to tell you like first of all you need to learn about this thing called node.js to make these backend apps and then there's a couple of Frameworks and libraries that are somewhat similar maybe to Django and this is how you interact with a database and this is how you do web templating or HTML templating on all of that stuff right but most of the underlying knowledge it's actually going to fully translate over like if you've worked with d Jango templates then working with a JavaScript based templating language it's going to be very easy for you to adapt those skills you know once you know how to deploy a python application to production it will be very very similar um if for any kind of other um programming environment and programming language like you're you want to make sure you you learn these Concepts and you understand these Concepts so that you can adapt them to um to other languages it's sort of like in object objectoriented programming how you have classes and then instances off these classes you know the actual objects like you you want to be good at figuring out these these classes of problems and then whether you program in Python or JavaScript or something else that's just an instance of of this problem you know it's a bit of a weird analogy here maybe but um whatever so um and I think it's true like actually I think this is true right so whatever you can do to learn these fundamental principles you'll be able to adapt them to whatever the circumstances are and um this is how you are successful in the long term as a developer now you know one more thing that I wanted to mention before the end of this video is that there's just so much demand for software developers right now it almost doesn't matter what you're getting into um you know if you if you can solve people's problems with programming you will be able to find work and people will be willing to train you on the job like I don't know how much longer this will remain but in my opinion this is still a fantastic opportunity and there's a lot of opportunity in python also specifically just because you know it has so much momentum and PE and and companies are going to make more and more Investments towards python because they can get people who already know it and it's being taught in universities and um so I think we're still you know we haven't reached the peak of that wave so now is like a really good time to get in but nevertheless you want to be prepared for when that time comes that you can switch to something else you know like I've in the past I've done mobile development um you know writing IOS and Android apps for for clients and also co-founded uh a company where our core product was um a mobile app and then you know some API back end and website and a website associated with that so um I I learned that and then I did it for a while and then I went and did something else and it was it to me it always always felt like a relatively smooth transition and actually a very enjoyable thing you know because I got to learn um completely different um patterns of interactions you know how do use how do people use a mobile application versus versus how they use um a web application and a lot of it is very similar but and and now like these things are actually like merging together now or most or like many new mobile applications are actually web applications in in in the background there you know like fewer and fewer people write native applications so this is all interconnected and um I actually as a developer I get a kick out of learning new stuff and and learning new technologies and so this is kind of the mindset you want to approach this with and you want to approach your career with in order to have a fulfilling and a successful career as a software developer all right so I hope this answered the question um feel free to leave comments below the video and it would be great to have a discussion about this topic because I think it is a really really interesting and very very important question all right thanks for listening and have a good one