Why Python for AI

Why Python for AI
Artificial intelligence is considered to be the trending technology of the future. Already there are a number of applications made on it. Due to this, many companies and researchers are taking interest in it. But the main question that arises here is that in which programming language can these AI applications be developed? There are various programming languages like Lisp, Prolog, C++, Java and Python, which can be used for developing applications of AI. Among them, Python programming language gains a huge popularity and the reasons are as follows −

Simple syntax & less coding
Python involves very less coding and simple syntax among other programming languages which can be used for developing AI applications. Due to this feature, the testing can be easier and we can focus more on programming.

Inbuilt libraries for AI projects
A major advantage for using Python for AI is that it comes with inbuilt libraries. Python has libraries for almost all kinds of AI projects. For example, NumPy, SciPy, matplotlib, nltk, SimpleAI are some the important inbuilt libraries of Python.

Open source − Python is an open source programming language. This makes it widely popular in the community.

Can be used for broad range of programming − Python can be used for a broad range of programming tasks like small shell script to enterprise web applications. This is another reason Python is suitable for AI projects.

Features of Python
Python is a high-level, interpreted, interactive and object-oriented scripting language. Python is designed to be highly readable. It uses English keywords frequently where as other languages use punctuation, and it has fewer syntactical constructions than other languages. Python's features include the following −

Easy-to-learn − Python has few keywords, simple structure, and a clearly defined syntax. This allows the student to pick up the language quickly.

Easy-to-read − Python code is more clearly defined and visible to the eyes.

Easy-to-maintain − Python's source code is fairly easy-to-maintain.

A broad standard library − Python's bulk of the library is very portable and cross-platform compatible on UNIX, Windows, and Macintosh.

Interactive Mode − Python has support for an interactive mode which allows interactive testing and debugging of snippets of code.

Portable − Python can run on a wide variety of hardware platforms and has the same interface on all platforms.

Extendable − We can add low-level modules to the Python interpreter. These modules enable programmers to add to or customize their tools to be more efficient.

Databases − Python provides interfaces to all major commercial databases.

GUI Programming − Python supports GUI applications that can be created and ported to many system calls, libraries and windows systems, such as Windows MFC, Macintosh, and the X Window system of Unix.

Scalable − Python provides a better structure and support for large programs than shell scripting.

Important features of Python
Let us now consider the following important features of Python −

It supports functional and structured programming methods as well as OOP.

It can be used as a scripting language or can be compiled to byte-code for building large applications.

It provides very high-level dynamic data types and supports dynamic type checking.

It supports automatic garbage collection.

It can be easily integrated with C, C++, COM, ActiveX, CORBA, and Java.