Python
What is Python?
Python is a programming language commonly used in data science and machine learning, known for being human-readable and accessible to those learning to code. It has become the standard language for AI evaluation work (evals), machine learning processes, and data analysis in the AI community.
Why is Python used for AI product development?
Python has become the de facto standard for AI work because the data science and machine learning communities have established it as their primary tool. This means that techniques like error analysis, LLM-based evals, and code-based eval processes all use Python, typically in Jupyter Notebooks.
For product teams building AI features, this standardization has practical benefits. When you need to find resources, examples, or help from AI assistants like ChatGPT, the Python ecosystem for AI is mature and well-supported. The data science world has already solved many of the evaluation and analysis challenges that product teams now face when building AI products.
How accessible is Python for non-Python developers?
Python is remarkably accessible, even for those who have never written it before. The language is designed to be human-readable—when you look at Python code, you can often understand what it's doing even without prior experience.
With AI tools like ChatGPT available to help, teams can learn Python quickly for specific tasks like writing evals. By describing what you want to accomplish and asking ChatGPT to help write the Python code, you can build working solutions and learn the language at the same time. When deployed, Python can run in production environments like AWS Lambda alongside other languages like Node.js.
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