What are the best programming languages to learn for growth hacking?

Awesome question! From my experience Python is by far the best programing language for growth marketers.

I have been using Python for only a year but I have fallen in love. From scraping to developing tools that connect multiple API’s and can interact with a database Python is great.

Also, after you start understanding the structure you can do data analysis, machine learning, and regression algorithms. Most growth marketers typically don’t even think about deeper more nuanced tactics and end up focusing heavily on more common less effective tactics.

These skills really make a gigantic difference in what I am able to do as a growth marketer. After you scrape a website full of beautifully high quality leads you will not approach growth the same way again.

From a syntax standpoint Python is incredibly easy to pickup and read. After you write a few scripts you will start to see the patterns. The open source projects on Github are a fantastic way to start.

Here are a few tips and resources if you are looking to learn Python from a growth marketing lens:

• Beautiful Soup - Write your first scraper in Beautiful Soup. You will learn a lot of the basics without so much confusion and the syntax is easily readable. Great video tutorial.
• Python 2 & 3 - They are not the same. So, pip install xyz is not the same as pip3 install xyz. Pro tip don’t accidentally delete the entire Python ☺️.
• Don’t Overuse Lists - A lot of introductory tutorials will use lists as a data type since there examples are simple. Its best to use Dictionaries. That way you don’t need to remember what number some item is. Instead you can just call it by what it is.
• SQLite - Good to start but know you will have to switch to another database type eventually. Here is a Mac app for opening a database.
• Understand JSON - This took me longer than I expected. Since all API’s basically use JSON it’s important to understand.
• CodeRunner - As a way to get started I have used CodeRunner. It was way simpler to setup than some of the other IDE’s and the code runs just as good when you are learning.
• Write everything as small Functions - Instead of writing monolithically long scripts (like I did at first) write small bite sized functions. You will save yourself many dark hours of sadness.
• Play around with few APIs - Hunter.io and Clearbit are two really great ones to get you started. Hunter allows you to get emails from a domain name and the API format is very common. Both are great apis for growth marketers.
• Dataset** (For Getting Started With Databases)** - This is way easier than using some of the other modules. It makes intuitive sense and gets you pretty far.