They call themselves Pythonistas and over 500 of them came together on December 16 at Pakistan’s very first Python conference, PyCon.

Considered the programming language of the future, Python is rapidly revolutionizing the world and growing rapidly among the high-income countries of the world. From support systems to robotics, and from banking to healthcare, there isn’t much that the Python language isn’t used to develop. Google, Instagram, Quora, Mozilla, NASA and many more run on Python or have used parts of it to support their framework.

But Pakistan, along with other developing countries, seems to have missed the note on this important update.

PyCon Pakistan aimed to bring the local industry up to date with the language and its applications, especially in areas such as artificial intelligence and robotics.

The audience for the event was a diverse mix – students, teachers, freelancers and professionals all gathered from across the country to attend. And what started out as a community building exercise has turned into something bigger. The event was not just a typical technical conference. Despite a very focused audience, he had enough juice to keep even complete beginners hooked.

“I have never worked in machine learning, despite working in Python. So this event basically helps me learn a lot of things – it’s easy access to best practices in the world, ”said a software engineer at the event.

The event took care to meet the diverse needs of its audience. Attendees could choose lectures aimed at beginners if they were looking to learn from the start – or opt for the advanced sessions if they were already part of the Python family.

Zahra Khan, a senior developer who has worked in PHP, came to the event to learn more about the scope of Python. “I’m trying to see if that’s something that I, with the team I’m leading, should move on,” she said.

“From new bots to self-driving cars, you can do a lot of things with this language,” she added.

Even the enthusiastic students had big ideas about what they could do with the language. Jamal Butt, a student attending the event, decided he wanted to work on robotics and drones.

The sessions even attracted entrepreneurs who are in the process of switching to the language. “We recently moved most of our projects to Python because I know it is fast becoming one of the most popular languages ​​in the world,” explained Daniyal Zahid.

A welcoming community

Some of the biggest names in the industry from around the world spoke at the event.

“Raymond Hettinger is like the Shahrukh Khan of the Python community,” says one participant. “Hettinger has worked with the language for 15 years, during which time he created multiple tools and trained over 4,000 engineers.”

David Beazley opened his opening speech with a trombone performance. Beazley is a big name in the Python world, and her presence at the event meant they walked away with rich content.

“I have been involved with Python for over 20 years, and have always found it to have a very enthusiastic and welcoming community. The community thrives when people give back to it, so I always welcome opportunities where I can share. my own enthusiasm for Python. Plus, in times like this where there is so much fear and division, it’s even more important to cultivate communities that bring people together. Even though I couldn’t attend in person it was fun and an honor to speak at the first event Beazley said in explaining how he became part of the event.

The event may have been the first effort to bring the Python community together in the country, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from the number of people who showed up.

“PyCon in the UK has been going on for about 10 years, and it was only this year that they managed to bring together 700 people – this event started with over 500 people the first time we did it” , Nudrrat Khawaja, one of the organizers, said at the event.

A world of predictions

Maria Shoaib, speaker at the event, said she is passionate about Python and spoke about the basics of machine learning at the event. She highlighted how data can be used to make life easier.

“You can predict so many different things with Python. You can predict things like network outages and predict in advance when a fiber optic cable will fail. You can predict earthquakes in advance or even natural disasters – there are many applications for that, ”she said.

Ammara Laeeq, another coach of the event, echoed Maria’s feelings. She covered the topic of chatbots and Facebook messengers at the event. “A chat bot is a program that can talk like a human. Today, companies are deploying robots to interact with their customers online. Imagine ordering pizza and bringing it to your door without ever speaking to a human being, ”she said enthusiastically.

Opportunities for the future

Python as a language might be the new kid on the block, but it quickly became the most popular in the market. The TIOBE index ranks it as the fourth most popular programming language. It also has the fifth largest StackOverflow community (a forum with 85.9,000 subscribers and around 500,000 questions.)

And PyCon couldn’t have come to Pakistan at a better time.

“We are really passionate about building a community of Python programmers because it is the language to adopt these days. It will certainly be the language of the next 10 years as well, ”explained Yasser Bashir, CEO of Arbisoft.

“We are entering a new era where much of the research and many technologies deployed will rely on the problem-solving capabilities of Python – you can use it to solve real problems in the modern world,” he said. -he adds.

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Dawn.com is Pycon Pakistan’s media partner.