Introduction to Python programming language

Python is a general-purpose interpreted, interactive, object-oriented, and high-level programming language.

Who was the creator of Python Programming Language?

It was created by Guido van Rossum during 1985- 1990. The python source code is also available under the GNU General Public License (GPL). This tutorial gives enough understanding of Python programming language.
Following is a quote by Guido van Rossum:

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“Python is an experiment in how much freedom program-mers need. Too much freedom and nobody can read another’s code; too little and expressive-ness is endangered.”

 

Versions of Python

The first version of Python i.e. 1.0 was released in January 1994. Python 3.7 is the latest stable version available.

Version Release Date
Python 1.0 (first standard release)
Python 1.6 (Last minor version)		 January 1994
September 5, 2000
Python 2.0 (Introduced list comprehensions)
Python 2.7 (Last minor version)		 October 16, 2000
July 3, 2010
Python 3.0 (Emphasis on removing duplicative constructs and module)
Python 3.7 (Last updated version)		 December 3, 2008
June 27, 2018

Important Features of Python Programming Language

    1. Easy-to-learn / Easy-to-read / Easy-to-maintain
    2. A broad standard library
    3. Interactive Mode
    4. Portable
    5. Extendable
    6. Databases
    7. GUI Programming
    8. Scalable
    9. Easily integrated with C, C++, COM, ActiveX, CORBA, and Java.

What are some of the Application Areas of Python?

  1. Web and Internet Development
    • Frameworks such as Django and Pyramid.
    • Micro-frameworks such as Flask and Bottle.
    • Advanced content management systems such as Plone and Django CMS.
  2. Scientific and Numeric
    • SciPy is a collection of packages for mathematics, science, and engineering.
    • Pandas is a data analysis and modeling library.
    • IPython is a powerful interactive shell that features easy editing and recording of a work session and supports visualizations and parallel computing.
    • Machine Learning and Deep Learning
  3. Education
  4. Desktop GUIs
    • wxWidgets
    • Kivy, for writing multi-touch applications.
    • Qt via pyqt or pyside
  5. Software Development
    • SCons for build control.
    • Buildbot and Apache Gump for automated continuous compilation and testing.
    • Roundup or Trac for bug tracking and project management.
  6. Business Applications
    • Odoo is an all-in-one management software that offers a range of business applications that form a complete suite of enterprise management applications.
    • Tryton is a three-tier high-level general purpose application platform.

What are the types of Python development?

Python is used mainly for Data Analysis and Web development. There has been a growth in the Data Science using Python programming language. Django framework is the most popular framework written in Python that is used for web development. A comparision of the different usage of Python is shown below:-

Source:- https://opensource.com/article/18/5/numbers-python-community-trends

Python 2 vs. Python 3

Python 2 was one of the widely used Python version most popular among developers. With the release of Python 3 on late 2018, the use of Python 3 has increased upto 75% till date. The following pie chart shows the usage of the Python version:-

 

Python frameworks, libraries, and technologies

Among the different frameworks available for Python, Django is the most popular framework. Other frameworks for machine learning purpose are equally popular among developers. Numpy is one of the most used libraries for Machine learning purpose.

How Python Code is executed?

Python code is saved with a .py extension and translated to bytecode (.pyc). The bytecode is executed by Python Virtual Machine. The python interpreter runs the python code. There are two types of Python interpreter:-

  1. CPython is the default interpreter for Python that is written in C programming language.
  2. Jython is another popular implementation of python interpreter written using Java programming language.

The official website of Python is https://python.org where you can get more information about Python.

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