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Best programming language for machine learning

Best programming language for machine learning

The most challenging decision for anyone willing to venture into the machine learning field is understanding where to start. Language to use is a major challenge even to people with prior knowledge of machine learning. Programming language is a tool that can either simplify or complicate the business solution while applying machine learning. There are over 700 programming languages currently used by programmers. Each of these languages has its strengths and weaknesses in solving different problems. Programmers at the beginner level wonder which language to use in their machine learning project. Suppose you are such a person, then worry not. You are in the right place. A language is a tool like any other. A farmer will select his tool depending on the activities he is going to carry. He will select either an iron fork hoe or mattock, depending on the nature of his land. Programmers do also have factors to consider while selecting a computer language to use in their machine learning project.



We cant select a language before understanding what machine learning entails. In layman's language, machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence that gives a computer able to learn using historical data. Historical data comes in huge amounts, sometimes termed as big data. For the machine learning models to be accurate, the data used in training should be big enough to minimize the possibility of overfitting. In machine learning, a programmer will not write a block of code to execute instruction but rather a model is trained that will have the ability to make decisions. in other words, we are in a cognitive computing era where we no longer write codes to execute an instruction.



The programming language to be used in machine learning depends on the purpose of the model that is being trained. Availability of the libraries and machine learning framework is a major factor to consider. Am sure you are reading this article because you need to know the best language for you to use in your machine learning projects. It is, however, good for me not to sugarcoat anything. There is no best or worst language to be used in machine learning. This, however, doesn't mean all the languages are the same. Each language is good for its own application. Machine learning engineers will choose the language to be used depending on the kind of business problem they are going to solve. Python is a scripting language that can best work on natural language processing and sentiment analysis. Java, on the other side, can be preferred when it comes to security and threat detection



From the above, it is clear that some languages will be preferred over others depending on the application. From where I stand, I rank python at the top of my list when it comes to languages used in machine learning. below are the 5 strong reasons why I make this conclusion.



Python is a simple and consistent language

Python has got very concise and readable codes. Python code can be easily understood even by people without python skills



Python has got extensive machine learning frameworks and libraries

Python is rich in pre-written machine learning codes that programmers can import to their own projects. These pre-written codes are called libraries. Some of the python machine learning libraries include; Keras, TensorFlow, sci-kit-learn, NumPy, pandas, and seaborn.



Python offers the platform-independent programmer

This allows programmers to implement a solution in one machine and use this solution in another machine without making changes in the code. Python is supported on many platforms, including Linux, Windows, and macOS



Python has got great community and popularity

In the survey carried out by the stack overflow in the year 2020, python was featured among the highest used language. This means that one can get help from the community easily once there is a problem in the code. Since python is open-source, it encourages people to utilize the already available solutions and implement them for their own good



Rapid Development

Python has easy syntax comparing other programming languages like C++ or Java. And languages like C++, Rust, and Java have a complex and longest learning curve. Compared with them Python is much easier. It is possible to do many things with fewer lines of code than in other languages. There are a lot of libraries available for python. So Development is faster with python.



Though Python is slower than some of the programming languages also popular for machine learning, Instead of this python has many advantages over other languages for machine learning and it is the most beginner friendly language.

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