Python proves to be the perfect programming language for geeks, makers, and hackers

Posted by: pr 4 years, 11 months ago

“The best thing about Python is that it is open source and there are a lot of resources available for it.” Gergely Imreh Co-founder of Taipei Hackerspace

Gergely Imreh, co-founder of Taipei Hackerspace and former researcher at Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taiwan spoke at PyCon Taiwan 2013 on "Python in a physic’s lab". Photo: Toomore Chiang

Words by Yahsin Huang and Gergely Imreh

Taipei Hackerspace, founded in January 2013, is a non-profit community-operated shared workspace located in Taipei city to offer a place for people who are interested in planning and executing creative projects usually in science, technology and electronics. It is an open space intended to promote productive conversations across disciplines. Gergely Imreh, co-founder of Taipei Hackerspace and former researcher at Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, suggests that Python can best serve the needs of all stages of scientific research.

Founders of Taipei Hackerspace gathered on the rooftop of Taipei Hackerspace. Photo: Taipei Hackerspace’s Facebook page

From experiments design to data processing and visualization, Gergely Imreh, a Hungarian experimental physicist based in Taiwan, uses Python to handle scientific work. According to Imreh, Python can be useful at all stages of the science research: planning and exploratory calculations; hardware control and user interface design for experiments; scripting tasks and data analysis. In fact, in many science laboratories, SciPy and NumPy libraries are used extensively. “What I like about Python is its combination of great features.” Imreh suggests that the free and open source language allows students who gained expertise in Python during their school years to go on developing their research when they are graduated without paying any software license fee. Furthermore, people can check and duplicate scientific results if they have access to the same tools. Python is also a full featured language. Unlike other modern programming languages, its rich libraries makes it a very versatile tool suitable for all different stages and tasks of scientific research from planning, hardware control, to data analysis. Imreh suggests that the best thing about Python is that it is open source and there are a lot of resources available for it. In the Taipei Hackespace, people use Python for many different projects. With the rising popularity of 3D printing many tools are written in Python, such as FreeCAD for modeling, and Cura and Printrun for printing. Others use it for quick prototyping and automating their projects with Python scripts.

Taipei Hackerspace’s address: 4F, No 26, Lane 133, Rd. Taiyuan, Taipei City, Taiwan 台北市太原路133巷26號4樓.

Phone number: +886-2-2550-7630. Make sure you give them a ring before your visit. Or check out their Calender or their Facebook page to find out when they have Open House and/or other events.
Taipei Hackerspace’s websites: http://tpehack.no-ip.biz ; http://taipeihackerspace.github.io/

Note. Chinese translated contents contributed to Python Taiwan Brochure made by PyCon APAC 2014 organizing committee in March 2014.