Python is an interpreted high-level general-purpose programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability with its use of significant indentation. Its language constructs as well as its object-oriented approach aim to help programmers write clear, logical code for small and large-scale projects.
Python is dynamically-typed and garbage-collected. It supports multiple programming paradigms, including structured (particularly, procedural), object-oriented and functional programming. It is often described as a "batteries included" language due to its comprehensive standard library.
Guido van Rossum began working on Python in the late 1980s, as a successor to the ABC programming language, and first released it in 1991 as Python 0.9.0.[34] Python 2.0 was released in 2000 and introduced new features, such as list comprehensions and a cycle-detecting garbage collection system (in addition to reference counting). Python 3.0 was released in 2008 and was a major revision of the language that is not completely backward-compatible. Python 2 was discontinued with version 2.7.18 in 2020.
Python consistently ranks as one of the most popular programming languages.
Paradigm Multi-paradigm: object-oriented, procedural (imperative), functional, structured, reflective
Designed by: Guido van Rossum
Developer: Python Software Foundation
First appeared: 20 February 1991: 30 years ago
Stable release:
3.10
Preview release:
3.11.0
Typing discipline: Duck, dynamic, strong typing; gradual (since 3.5, but ignored in CPython)
OS: Windows, Linux/UNIX, macOS and more
License: Python Software Foundation License
Filename extensions: .py, .pyi, .pyc, .pyd, .pyo (prior to 3.5), .pyw, .pyz (since 3.5)
Website: www.python.org