A Complete Guide to Python For App Development
“I have an app idea, but I don’t know which programming language should I choose to make it run smoother.”
Inevitably, you must have tried surfing the internet if this is the case. Didn’t you? And if you have seen Google trends, you must know Python is the most searched programming language in the period of December 2020 – December 2021.
After looking at the trends, no one wants to miss knowing Python. Rest assured. We have created this comprehensive guide to Python for app development to help you learn about Python. So, let’s get started.
Why and When Develop Mobile Apps With Python?
According to the IEEE survey, Python is the top programming language among mobile app developers worldwide. Considered as an emerging programming language, it is pretty evident in these statistics.
Being non-technical, if you have no idea how to make an app with Python, then do not worry. In this section, we have explained why and when it is essential to develop an app with Python. But before that, let’s understand a bit about Python.
It is a high-level and general-purpose programming language that supports object-oriented programming and structured programming. Hence, it becomes easy to build mobile apps and web apps using this language. Being versatile and powerful, it is a great choice to opt for Python app development. In fact, it also allows you to think like a programmer and doesn’t confuse with complex syntaxes.
Moreover, here are the reasons you should use Python:
- Readable and maintainable Python code
- Supports several programming paradigms
- Compatible with major platforms and systems
- The large and robust Python standard library
- The standard library supports many Internet protocols, such as HTML and XML
- Allow using GUI toolkit, like PyQT, PyJs, PyGUI, Kivy, PyGTK, and WxPython
Millions of developers use Python to build mobile and web applications, write data-crunching pipelines, generate reports, automate tests, conduct research, and several other tasks in a multitude of domains. People admire it for being an “adjustable desk” language.
However, before you choose it for software development, ensure you know its pros and cons. Let’s dig into the next section to check more about its advantages and disadvantages.
Pros and Cons of App Development with Python
Weighing up the pros and cons can always help you to make a decision. Therefore, we have shared a list of some pros and cons. Consider reading the mentioned pros and cons to know more about Python. Let’s get started with each one of them!
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| – Easy to Use Programming Language – The Simple Syntax Ensures Lowest Learning Curve – Great for Visualizing Data and Reports – Straightforward Syntax Makes It Easy to Read Language – Highly Flexible to Integrate with Other Languages – Supports and Maintains Asynchronous Code | – A Little Slower Than Other Programming Languages – GIL (Global Interpreter Lock) Execute Only One Thread at a Time – Difficult to Switch to Languages with Complex Syntax – Lack of True Multiprocessor Support |
What Kind of Apps Can be Built Using Python?
- Blockchain Applications – There is no denying that blockchain is one of the hottest trends when it comes to building mobile applications. However, it was not easy to develop blockchain apps until Python came into the picture.Python has made blockchain application development much easier for mobile app developers. The reason behind it is that Python is a very understandable language, which makes the mobile development process a lot more facilitated.
Flask, a web application framework that will help to employ Python in building blockchain apps. It will also ensure that a Python developer use HTTP requests. This will help them to interact with blockchain over the internet and also will be able to make endpoints for various functions of blockchain. They can run the Python script on multiple machines for forming a decentralized network – all thanks to Python.
Top Blockchain App Developed with Python: BurstIQ - Machine Learning Applications – We can’t complete our list without adding machine learning. This is another inspiring tech trend of this decade. It is algorithm technology that adds data to the operating systems and lets the operating system make intelligent decisions.Other than this, NLP (Natural Language Processing) is also a part of machine learning. It helps the system to analyze, manipulate, and understand human language to make an algorithm work.
Using this technology may really sound like complex work to do for developers. However, again Python has worked in favor of developing machine learning applications. The advantage of Python is that it comes with various libraries like Pandas and Scikit, especially for machine learning. You can easily avail these tools for free and use them under a GNU license.
Top Machine Learning App Developed with Python: Netflix - Business Applications – Python is highly agile, and therefore it is capable enough to develop various types of mobile applications. The reason you should choose it to develop business apps is that it assists in developing such mobile apps that automate complex business processes and operations. Python is a great choice when it comes to developing apps to boost the productivity of your business.
Apart from this, building ERP and E-commerce solutions become easily possible as you can make use of Odoo for Python mobile app development. It is an all-in-one management software written in Python. It helps you with a suite of business management apps.
Top Business App Developed with Python: Dropbox - Social Networking Applications – We all use social networking applications to connect to our friends. However, it is not at all easy for social media apps to manage millions of users. But all thanks to Python, as it has a heavier footprint in regards to memory, processor, and disk usage.
Talking about Instagram, it serves more than 800 million users every day. It also uses Django, a Python framework for managing its users. The team of Instagram engineers moved to Python 3 that has improved the efficiency of Instagram’s web service.
Top Social Networking App Developed with Python: Instagram - Game Applications – Many entrepreneurs opted to build gaming applications. Therefore, they look for a powerful programming language and what could be better than Python. For all the gaming enthusiasts, it has really helped to make applications, like EVE Online and Battlefield 2.
The prime reason for using it in gaming apps is for all its add-ons and functionalities. An app like the World of Tanks only uses Python because of the majority of its features. Even Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean game is also written with the Panda 3D game engine, and it is entirely written in Python.
Top Game App Developed with Python: Pirates of the Caribbean
Popular Applications Developed with Python
Various companies are making apps using Python. Here are a few popular applications that have used Python to simplify complex business needs. Let’s check!
To know how Python has helped these apps, let’s check the use case for each popular Python-based mobile app.
| Popular App | App Category | Developed In | Use Cases | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Social Networking | 2009 | Pinterest uses the Django web framework to deal with a mass of content as it is an image sharing site. Pinterest is making use of Python to offer the best user experience. | $442.6 million | |
| Social Networking | 2010 | To handle more than 800 million active users every month, Instagram uses Python on its backend. Instagram also uses Django, which is written entirely in Python. | $6.8 billion | |
| Spotify | Music Streaming | 2006 | Python has helped Spotify in advanced data analysis and backend services. It helps to app work faster and manages several advanced functions, such as Discover and Radio. | $6.7 billion |
| Dropbox | Business | 2007 | Dropbox is a file-hosting service and recently moved from Python 2.7 to Python 3. Python is portable and capable enough to work on various platforms, from Linux and PC to PlayStation. | $6.7 billion |
| Uber | On-demand | 2009 | Python helps Uber handle a large amount of data as it has more than 100 million users. It makes the app secure, reliable, and manageable. | $14.1 billion |
| Forum-based App | 2005 | Over 600 million monthly active users make Reddit one of the most prominent examples of using Python. It offers Reddit great development flexibility and wider access to code libraries. | $120 million |
Have some doubts and questions in mind? Don’t worry. Here, we have also answered the most asked questions that generally beginners have in their minds.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which Python frameworks are the best for mobile app development?
Django: Django is an open-source Python framework and used for rapid development. It has simplex syntax, HTTP libraries, and an ORM (Object Relational Mapper).
Kivy: Kivy is a GUI framework that helps you create desktop user interfaces and apps for the iOS platform (App Store) and the Android platform (Google Play Store) and still doesn’t look like native apps.
BeeWare: With BeeWare, you have to write once to deploy it anywhere. You can release it on various platforms, such as Android, iOS, Linux, and Windows.
Can Python programming language be a good choice for enterprise apps?
Just to break a bubble right away, Python is used for various commercial and government enterprise purposes to some extent. Also, it gives a Python developer simple libraries to utilize data structures and data analytics tools.
Either to possess as a glue language to combine several components together or to build a complete mobile app, it has always played a major role for enterprise apps.
What are the key features of Python?
Here are some of the key features of this programming language.
- It is an interpreted language
- Well suited to object-orientated programming
- Functions are first-class objects
- Can be used for web application development and big data applications
Conclusion
We hope that all this information on Python will help you take one step closer to your mobile application development project. Choose programming language wisely after weighing up all the factors, such as reviews, features, advantages, and disadvantages.
In case, you face any challenge during Python mobile app development or Python Web application development and need help from the experts, contact us. You can get in touch with us through our contact us form and one of our technical experts will get back to you. Our experts have hands-on experience in developing Python-based apps for Android, iOS, and Web platforms.
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