It is early 2010, I have just started my PhD in Astrophysics and I am trying to understand how to do things. Previously I was using mainly spreadsheets (either through Excel or Origin), but now I have to deal with different formats and approaches. Images, strange format that can hold both image and tables (.fits files), strange software to process data. And then, various approaches to open files, handle their data, store them back, sent them around etc.
Fortunately, I was already experienced with Linux – the last version of Win I used ever was XP! So I did not have any issues to use terminal, but applying awk and sed commands to do analysis was definitely new to me. And by that time I discovered Python! It could do many of these things and more. But how exactly ? For some reason I could see a future in this, so I dove into this.
15 years later, Python has been my go-to tool for almost everything. But it’s not just me! There has been a surprising twist across the whole community.
I am really honored and excited (and … a bit anxious) to have been invited to share this personal perspective in the first PyCon event in Greece (29-30 August).
