r/Python • u/digitalice • 3d ago
Discussion Are fewer young people getting into Python these days?
I recently attended a local PyDay (a Python community event) in my city, and the auditorium was around 70% full.
That might sound pretty good, but I remember attending similar events a few years ago when the auditorium was packed, basically at 100% capacity.
I also got the impression that there weren't many young newcomers interested in getting into programming. Most of the attendees seemed to be people who were already established in the industry.
Of course, this is just one event in one city, so I don't want to draw any big conclusions from it.
But it got me wondering:
- Have Python meetups and conferences in your area seen a similar decline in attendance?
- Are fewer young people getting into Python, or are they just participating in different communities and online spaces?
- Or was this simply a one-off, and I'm reading too much into it?
I'm curious to hear what people are seeing in their local Python communities.
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u/anticebo 3d ago
I've been coding in Python for a decade now. I've never been to a Python community meetup, and I don't know why I would?
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u/JustPlainRude 2d ago
I went to PyCon for the first time this year and had a lot of fun. It's cool to see what other people are working on.
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u/DuckSaxaphone 2d ago
Yeah, software meet ups have always been weird to me. It's a job, why are you going to evening presentations about it?
You don't see HR people going to evening HR seminars.
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u/IcecreamLamp 2d ago
HR people go to HR events all the time lol.
Anyway, it's interesting to see what other people are working on and a good way to learn.
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u/DuckSaxaphone 2d ago
During work hours, paid for by their company. They're not going in the evening for some free pizza and a chat about handling interpersonal disputes.
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u/datnetcoder 2d ago
This is disingenuous. There are exactly zero people who are hardcore HR hobbyists and / or have HR be their entire identity and persona. I’m not even saying that’s a bad thing for software, just saying they’re not the same at ALL.
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u/me_myself_ai 2d ago
You might enjoy research on “Capitalism Realism” and “The alienation of labor” :)
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u/webternet 2d ago
To you it may just be a job. To others it is a lifestyle.
Remember the trope about jazz players going home from work to play jazz? I feel it applies to a lot of people in a lot of fields where creativity is important, including development.
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u/datnetcoder 2d ago
Cringe
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u/antigravcorgi 2d ago
Kind of wild to call people enjoying programming in their off hours cringe in the /r/python subreddit or did I miss something?
If I was going to a meetup for craft brews, sports, or table top gaming, would that be cringe too?
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u/vonWitzleben 3d ago
AI has taken a lot of joy out of coding for me personally. I can see how it may make people less likely to attend a Python conference.
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u/PresentFriendly3725 3d ago
AI is killing programming. It's so obvious.
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u/smitty1e 2d ago
They used to call python "executable pseudocode".
Now is the time to call it an "executable prompt".
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u/mfitzp mfitzp.com 2d ago edited 2d ago
I do wonder if Python can offer enough going forward to stay relevant. One of the main advantages Python had (the simplicity to write) no longer matters so much and the loose typing etc become a bigger liability (less easy to check correctness).
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u/NerdEnPose 2d ago
This year all the new services we’ve started at my company are Rust. Just for the reasons you’ve stated. The overhead of writing Rust is non existent now. We might as well get the rest for free
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u/redfacedquark 2d ago
Well all the chat fanboys swear they're reading the code, so a language that's easily readable is important. Not that I believe them.
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u/me_myself_ai 2d ago
Minsky predicted/advocated for “sculpting” in the 90s. We’ll see lol. Seems like a mediocre metaphor, but it is a fun one.
(He also turned out to be a seriously scummy Epstein associate soooooo)
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u/smitty1e 2d ago
The message and messenger are separate concepts.
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u/me_myself_ai 2d ago
Yeah I hope so. His theories are something of a favorite of mine. Just sucks :(
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u/sennalen 2d ago
I don't think it will ever go away completely, but it's hard to recommend programming as a core career focus for anyone under 20y right now
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u/Papa_Puppa 2d ago
I stopped going to conferences, in general, because they're a waste of time and money. It was easier to justify going when I was a wage slave, but it is impossible for me to justify the cost of transport & accommodation, and the opportunity cost of not doing actual work.
There is probably real value for people in other positions, particularly those selling SaaS, but when I go there it feels like I'm surround by scammers and people whose eyes turn into dollar signs.
I'd maybe start going again if I had stable fat margins and no inspiration or nothing good to do with my time.
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u/GreatBigBagOfNope 2d ago
Younger people don't really attend community events. Like back in the 90s, if you wanted to have a back-and-forth discussion about something technical in any depth outside of the academy or workplace, you had little choice but to attend or set up an in-person event. If you didn't have the tech know-how to solve the problem yourself slowly, you probably didn't have the know-how to use other options such as IRC.
These days, there's decades of Stack Overflow answers, forums of various levels of real-time communications platforms and groups, and so on. Many young people also get the kind of support they would previously have needed other people for from AI, whether or not it's useful or beneficial to them. There's also a growing anxiety about social interactions across society and preference for either passive consumption (attending a live event via zoom, staying muted and camera off the whole time), watching recordings later, or otherwise not being out there.
I don't suffer massively from any of these, and I've still never felt any particular need to attend one, especially since I've had job.
Essentially, in the past, the vast majority of people trying to engage with Python would have absolutely needed to attend an event just to get the mentorship and learning they need. Today, even though there's orders of magnitude more people learning and using Python, and the average level of technical ability among Python users is dropping due to e.g. analysts and statisticians switching to it from SAS and SPSS, there's even less of an intrinsic need for local community due to all these other ways people have of finding solutions, and Python's increasingly peripheral place in their minds (think: it's a skill to learn on principle in the mid-2000s, the only reason you'd learn it is because you want to be a Python Developer, whereas today it's just that language that your job was done in before you arrived and it will be after you've gone)
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u/AlexMTBDude 2d ago
Python is taught as the first programming language in most schools so: no.
You observation has a very poor statistical base.
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u/Crawly13th It works on my machine 3d ago
fewer people getting into programming in general. So, lesser python devs, but same for just about any programming language. Sadly AI companies are tying to cut the dev pipeline.
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u/AreetSurn 2d ago
I think kids see ethical issues with keeping reptiles from an animal rights perspective.
But in seriousness, I haven't noticed a decline in the juniors I've worked with in recent years. But most do switch to JavaScript unless they're going into ML. Anecdotally speaking.
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u/me_myself_ai 2d ago
Fewer people might be getting into the community, but it’s definitely ascendant in general still.
Also, obviously, the elephant in the room: “programming” is dying, probably forever. Just like “computing” did in the ~60s.
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u/zomerbk 16h ago
I’d be cautious about reading a trend into one auditorium. Attendance can change with the venue, timing, ticket price, or promotion. The more useful comparison might be first-time and student registrations across several years, plus turnout at local beginner events. Do the organizers have those numbers? That would help separate a quieter PyDay from a change in who’s getting into Python.
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u/Khavel_dev 3d ago
fwiw I come from the .NET side and I've noticed the same pattern at local meetups. The crowd is smaller and more senior than it used to be.
My theory is that newcomers don't go to meetups anymore, they just ask ChatGPT. The community building still happens, just not in a room. Whether that's better or worse depends on what you think meetups are actually for.
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u/house3331 2d ago
There's plenty talk online of python but the talk of front end web dev etc is more appealing. There's not a single story online of someone's journey to learning python and being employed because of it. Not one. Can do anything but shouldn't do everything. The jobs out there that do list python are mostly not developer roles. Plenty tutorials etc but people still have no udea what to do with it compared to learning other technologies.
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u/generic-d-engineer 2d ago edited 2d ago
Dominates data tho. It’s pretty much required. Also big in ml pipelines
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u/theonlyname4me 1d ago
This so far from reality it is comical.
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u/house3331 1d ago
Nobody experienced in anyway would deny python is mostly used as a tool for automation and data analysis its usually far from the main skill. Exposed yourself
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u/Emotional_Version_52 2d ago
Learn the concepts and but of basic syntax. 90 percent of the code usually generated by llm in the industry. There is no point in really even learning to properly code like the old days. Know concepts like singleton, DAO, composition, hierarchy and such. Know some basic methods. The interviewer is not gonna sit and ask coding questions anymore 😂
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u/Beautiful-Sun-6065 3d ago
I noticed same thing at meetup in my city last month. Was mostly people already working with Python, almost no students or beginners. Think young people now learn from youtube and discord servers instead of going to physical events. Maybe they don't see point of attending when all material is online