Python Introduction

Here you will learn the basics of python programming language like what is python, advantages python, features of python, and the history of python programming language.

What is Python?

Python is an object-oriented, interpreted, and high-level programming language. Due to its interpreted nature and elegant syntax, python is an ideal programming language for developers to easily and efficiently build the applications.

 

Guido Van Rossum created the Python language, and it was released in 1991 as a successor of ABC programming language. He named it a python after the BBC great comedy show ‘Monty Python's Flying Circus’.

 

Python is a free, open-source, most popular programming language, and it runs on different platforms like Windows, Linux, Mac, etc. Nowadays, python is using in thousands of real-world business applications worldwide, including many large and mission-critical systems.

Advantages of Python

The following are the advantages of using a python programming language.

 

  • Due to its simple syntax, dynamic typing, and interpreted nature, python is the best choice for rapid application development.
  • Python is free and open-source software. So, we can use it freely for commercial purposes.
  • Python will allow the developers to write programs with fewer code lines than other programming languages like JAVA, C#, etc.
  • Python is a cross-platform language. So, we can easily move and run the python applications between different OS platforms without any changes.
  • Due to its readability nature, learning python is very easy when compared with other programming languages.
  • Python language helps build applications in many areas like web development, data science, machine learning, etc. 
  • We can easily integrate python language with other programming languages such as C, C++, JAVA, etc.

Features of Python

The following features of python will make it a language most people like to work with.

 

  • The python code syntax is very easy to read, and it resembles the same as the English language.
  • Python is an interpreter-based language that means the code will execute as soon as it was written.
  • Python supports automatic memory management. You don’t need to worry about the allocation and deallocation of memory while writing the programs.
  • In python, variables can be dynamically typed as well as strongly typed.
  • It supports several programming paradigms, can be used for imperative, Procedural Programming, Functional Programming, and Object-Oriented Programming.
  • Python supports basic data types like numbers, strings, and complex types like lists and dictionaries that can greatly simplify data processing.
  • Python is an open-source language, and it is licensed under GPL. Python is becoming better day by day with the help of a large group of the programming community.
  • Python has extensive free standard libraries to build web applications, machine learning, data science, etc. applications.

History of Python

Guido Van Rossum has created the python language, and the initial version (0.9) was released in February 1991. The first python version includes exception handling, functions, data types, modules, etc.

 

After 3 years, the next python version (1.0) was released in January 1994 by including features like functional programming tools (lambda, map, filter, and reduce), functions with arguments, etc.

 

The next Python version 2.0, was released in October 2000 after six and half years by including many features like Unicode support, list comprehensions, full garbage collector, etc.

 

Python continued the development in 2.x versions for 8 years and released the next python version 3.0 in December 2008 to fix the previous version problems. The problem is the python version 3.0 is not fully backward compatible with the previous versions. The current Python version is 3.8, released in October 2019.

 

Currently, the Python Software Foundation (PSF) supports both 2.x and 3.x versions, but there will be no further development support for python 2. The Python version 2.7 is the final version, and will no longer be supported after 2020. 

Python 2 vs. Python 3

The python 2.0 and 3.0 versions are the most used and popular versions to build the applications. The following are the few differences between the python 2.0 and python 3.0 versions.

 

  • Python 2.0 released in 2000, python 3.0 released in 2008 
  • Many libraries build in Python 2 will not be compatible with Python 3.
  • By default, Python 2 Strings are stored as ASCII, whereas Python 3 Strings are stored as Unicode.
  • Python 2 rounds the calculation down to the nearest whole number (Ex: 7/2 = 3). In Python 3, it will calculate the exact value (Ex: 7/2 = 3.5).
  • The print statement in Python 2 has been replaced with the Print() function in Python 3.

Python Application Types

In the last few years, python has become the most popular language to build applications in many areas. The following are the few areas where the python programming language becomes much popular.

 

  • Data Science: Python is having extensive libraries like Numpy (Numerical python for numerical related operations), Pandas (for data related operations), Matplotlib (for graphs and charts), etc. to analyze the raw data.
  • Machine learning: This is one of the areas where Python is most popular because of its wide variety of libraries like Scikit-learn, Tensorflow (used for neural networks), NLTK (natural language tool kit for language-related and speech-related applications), etc.
  • Image Processing: Python becomes the best choice in face detection and image process areas because of the OpenCV library.
  • Web Development: In the web development area, also python is most popular because of the libraries like Django, Flask, etc. make the web applications development easy.
  • Gaming Development: For games development also python is the popular choice because of the PyGame library.
  • Automated Jobs: It is extremely useful in automating jobs.