What is Python
Python is a high-level programming language that is multipurpose, versatile and cross-platform; a Python program written on a Macintosh computer will run on a Linux system and vice-versa.
It is applicable pretty much anywhere that uses data and mathematical computation. It is also used in web development.
Development of Python programming
It was designed by Guido van Rossum in 1991 and developed by Python Software Foundation. It was mainly developed for emphasis on code readability, and its syntax allows programmers to express concepts in fewer lines of code.
Figure: Guido van Rossum
History narrates that it was started firstly as a hobby project . It is said to have succeeded ABC Programming Language. Guido had already helped to create ABC earlier in his career and had seen some issues with ABC but liked most of the features. He took its syntax and some of its good features while fixing its issues completely, ending up creating a very good scripting language which had removed all the flaws.
Side-note: The 'Python' name isn't an abbreviation or acronym, but rather, simply the result of its creator, Guido van Rossum, being an avid Monty Python fan.
The language was finally released in 1991. It used a lot fewer codes to express the concepts, when we compare it with Java, C++ and C. In its design philosophy, its main objective is to provide code readability and advanced developer productivity. When it was released, it had more than enough capability to provide classes with inheritance, several core data types exception handling and functions.
Python 3.10.2 is the latest version. Its development has been in strides. It is the most popular coding language in the world having turned 30 recently.
For various purposes such as developing, scripting, generation and software testing, this language is utilized. Due to its elegance and simplicity, top technology organizations like Dropbox, Google, Quora, Mozilla, Hewlett-Packard, Qualcomm, IBM, and Cisco have implemented Python.
Python has been an inspiration for many other coding languages such as Ruby, Cobra, Boo, CoffeeScript ECMAScript, Groovy, Swift Go, OCaml, Julia etc.
Its major drawback has to be the length of time it takes to execute since it is an interpreted language and its dynamically typed.
Conclusion
Python remains a favorite of many developers. It is easily readable and maintainable; code resembles plain English. It supports both function-oriented and structure-oriented programming. It is also compatible with all popular operating systems and platforms. Python supports a large built-in library from which we can extract any feature to implement in the form of packages. Thus it enables one to implement a feature without writing excess code.
All this goes to show how attractive it is to learn, master and use Python in the modern programming universe.
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