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Netflix: Python programming language is behind every film you stream
The next time you're streaming on Netflix, you can thank popular programming language Python and the developers who use it for much of the experience.
According to Python developers at Netflix, the language is used through the "full content lifecycle", from security tools, to its recommendation algorithms, and its proprietary content distribution network (CDN) Open Connect, which ensures that content is streamed from network devices that are as close as possible to end users.
[...] At Netflix, many of the network devices that make up its CDN are "mostly managed by Python applications", which do tasks like tracking the inventory of network devices, their health and location.
"Python has long been a popular programming language in the networking space because it's an intuitive language that allows engineers to quickly solve networking problems," notes Netflix senior software engineer, Amjith Ramanujam.
The momentum behind the language is driven by useful libraries that get developed, he adds. These include the NumPy and SciPy libraries for Python, which Netflix uses to perform numerical analysis for its failover services. It's also a heavy user of Redis Queue and Jupyter Notebooks tools for Python.
Netflix also uses the Boto 3 AWS SDK for Python configure its AWS infrastructure. Netflix runs on mostly on AWS infrastructure and last year spent $1.3bn on technology and development.
And of course Python is used extensively within Netflix's machine-learning algorithms for things like content recommendations, artwork personalization, and marketing.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Wednesday May 01 2019, @12:40PM (1 child)
Certainly you can thank the developers for the streaming service; they make the thing work. But the language?
If Python would not have been available, the developers would have used another language to provide the service. And they would most likely have created the very same experience had they been programming it in Perl, PHP, Lisp, or maybe another language that never has been developed because the sweet spot it could have thrived in has already been taken by Python.
And yes, maybe Python made their job a bit easier. Then the developers can thank Python for it. But not the users of the streaming service, just like the user of carpentry products don't thank the drill the carpenter used, even though that drill might have made the job of the carpenter more easy.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Wednesday May 01 2019, @06:37PM
Twitter switched from Ruby to Java in 2012. Do most people care? Even if they know what Java is?
Most people don't know what a Python is. oh, wait. They think it's something different.
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