Python Introduction

Python is a high-level multi-purpose programming language. It was created by Guido van Rossum in the year 1991. It is an interpreted language. It is a language which is highly known for its readability and ease of learning. Python is also know for it syntax which allows the programmers to write the concept/logic in just few lines while compared to most of the other programming languages. Python is used in various range of applications such as web apps, scientific and mathematical computing, graphical user interfaces, animations etc. The Python introduction tutorial will further provide a brief information about the features of the language, version history and various large scale users.

Features of Python

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1. Dynamically typed
2. Multiple programming paradigms as follows,
   • Functional programming
   • Object oriented programming
   • Imperative programming
   • Procedural programming
3. Automatic memory management
4. Large number of third-party libraries
5. Multiple interpreters are available
6. Cross-compilers for compiling/integrating other languages
7. Wide variety of applications (Web, Graphics, Scientific research, Desktop, GUI etc.)

 

Python version history

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The following table shows the list of major releases of python. In addition to the below mentioned major releases, there are numerous minor releases as well.

In the aforementioned table, the reason for mentioning two minor release version details are because even though the latest stable version is 3.6, Python 2.X is still one of the widely used version of the language which has been implemented in large scale. A detailed list of version history with all major and minor release information and setup files (binaries) is available at https://www.python.org/downloads/.

Python users

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• Google
• Yahoo
• NASA
• CIA
• IBM
• Philips
• Lucasfilm

numerous other large corporations from wide variety of domains are running small to large scale enterprise applications in Python.

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