In this chapter, we'll have a gentle introduction tonatural language processing (NLP) and how natural language processing concepts are used in real-life artificial intelligence applications. We will focus mainly on Python programming paradigms, which are used to develop NLP applications. Later on, the chapter has a tips section for readers. If you are really interested in finding out about the comparison of various programming paradigms for NLP and why Python is the best programming paradigm then, as a reader, you should go through the Preface of this book. As an industry professional, I have tried most of the programming paradigms for NLP. I have used Java, R, and Python for NLP applications. Trust me, guys, Python is quite easy and efficient for developing applications that use NLP concepts.

We will cover following topics in this chapter:

• Understanding NLP
• Understanding basic applications
• Understanding advance applications
• Advantages of the togetherness--NLP and Python
• Environment setup for NLTK
• Tips for readers