Python History

Python is one of the top trending, widely-used programming languages. Python is a general-purpose programming language. Python language is known for its features. Some features are given below:

• Simplistic
• Free and open source
• Object-oriented Language
• High-Level Language
• GUI programming support
• Easy to learn and code

History of Python

• Guido Van Rossum invented the Python language. He was born on 31 January 1956 in Haarlem, outside of Amsterdam in the northwest Netherlands.
• The idea of Python started in the early 1980s, but the real implementation started in 1989 in December. That time when Guido Van Rossum was working on their research project at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in the Netherlands.
• CWI is a research centre in mathematics and theoretical computer science. Sir Van Rossum started it as a hobby project to keep him busy during the holidays of Christmas.
• Python is said to be a successor to the ABC programming language and was inspired by STEL(SET Language), which was based on the set theory in mathematics. Previously Guido Van Rossum worked on ABC programming language at CWI in the Netherlands.
• ABC language had features of exception handling and interfacing with the Amoeba operating system. He found some issues with the ABC programming language and liked most of the features in the ABC language, so after he had taken some good features of the ABC language and fixed those issues completely in Python language.
• Van Rossum published Python on 27 February 1991 to the public. It was a great need for a discussion forum, so in 1994, the primary discussion forum for Python was formed.

Why the Name is Python?

Python as a working title for the project came from BBC's TV comedy series name as 'Monty python's Flying Circus', and Python developer Guido was a big fan of this show and also he wanted a short and unique name. So hence he named it PYTHON.

Versions of Python

New features are continually added to the Python programming language. From 1994 until the most recent release, Python has seen numerous versions are given below:-

Python 1. x:

• Python was released in February 1991. It was Python version 0.9. It has many features like classes, inheritance, functions and exception handling. It has basic data types, str, list, and dict.
• In 1994 Python 1. It has many new features like map, filter, reduce, and lambda.
• Python 1.4 had some new features, such as Module-3 style keyword argument. This version has built-in support for performing complex number operations.

Python 2. x:

• Python 2 launched in 2000. There was a huge change in the source code of Python. It was a true object-oriented programming language.
• Python 2.1 was released in October 2001. Feature of scoping was added in this version.
• Python 2.2 launched in December 2001. Suitable types and classes into one hierarchy feature were added.
• In March 2005, python 2.4 was introduced. Decimal data types and function decorators were added. Generator expression for the iterator feature was introduced.
• Python 2.5 was introduced in September 2006. with a statement added.
• In October 2006 python 2.6 version was introduced. It has features typeError, _complex_(), and bin(). with statement also optimized.
• Python 2.7 was released in June 2009. Minor bugs are fixed in this version.

Python 3. x:

• Python 3 was introduced in December 2008. Biggest. The major goal was to fix the language's basic design faults by removing duplicate modules and constructs.
• Python 3.1 was released in June 2009. Support for ordered dictionaries has been added, allowing configuration files to be read, updated, and then written back in the same order in which they were read.
• Python 3.2 was introduced in February 2011. Adds the ability to limit modules to specific APIs that will remain stable over time.
• Python 3.3 was launched in September 2012. yield from the expression for generator delegation added. Made error-catching simplify.
• Python 3.4 was launched in March 2014. asyncio module added.
• Python 3.5 was introduced in September 2015. Add available objects, coroutine functions, asynchronous iteration, and asynchronous context managers to allow asynchronous programming.
• Python 3.6 was released in December 2016. asyncio module was stabilized, and an f-string was added. Support for asynchronous generator added.
• Python 3.7 was launched in June 2018. Reserved keyword async and await added. breakpoint() function was introduced.
• Python 3.8 was launched in October 2019. := (walrus operator) was added As part of a larger expression. This allows you to assign values to variables.

Download and Install the Latest version of Python on Windows/Linux/Mac

We know that Python is the most popular programming language in the world. Python language is used in software testing, machine learning, Data Science, Mobile apps and many more. Many other programming languages, including Ruby, Cobra, Boo, ECMAScript, Groovy, Swift Go and Julia, are inspired by Python.

To download Python, you need to visit their official website www.python.org. Here you can download the latest version of Python. The website will verify the operating system and provide appropriate download packages.