Are fewer young people getting into Python these days?

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

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?

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.

Just guessing, but young people may not see programming and dev work as a viable future job option, because of AI.

AI is killing programming. It's so obvious.

PyCon UK was as busy as ever last year, with what seemed like the usual mix of old and young people. Then it was cancelled this year (I believe due to lack of an organiser), so read into that what you will.

“Hey guys, I have one data point and a loaded question?”

I go to Scala events sometimes because it's still kind of niche and it's interesting to see who's using it and for what, but I don't know what I'd expect from a python conference. It's a general purpose language and widely used.

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.

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)

Python is taught as the first programming language in most schools so: no.

You observation has a very poor statistical base.

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. 

Im a young one and im actually learrning python right now

No they just have a life beyond going to py events

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.

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.

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.

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.

Well, this isn’t r/datascience

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.

There are no jobs for seniors let alone new people.

Why would they spend time on something that has no gain?

It is better to start a band, at least one would have friends and people around.

I’ll soon be learning python and am very excited to do so!!

Yes, I think it is happening. AI makes it unnecessary for most.

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 😂