PYTHON

Python History and Versions

• Python laid its foundation in the late 1980s.

• The implementation of Python was started in December 1989 by Guido Van
Rossum at CWI in Netherland.
• In February 1991, Guido Van Rossum published the code (labeled version
0.9.0) to alt.sources.
• In 1994, Python 1.0 was released with new features like lambda, map, filter,
and reduce.
• Python 2.0 added new features such as list comprehensions, garbage
collection systems.
• On December 3, 2008, Python 3.0 (also called "Py3K") was released. It was
designed to rectify the fundamental flaw of the language.
• ABC programming language is said to be the predecessor of Python language,
which was capable of Exception Handling and interfacing with the Amoeba
Operating System.
• The following programming languages influence Python:
• ABC language.
• Modula-3

Python Version List

Python programming language is being updated regularly with new features and
supports. There are lots of update in Python versions, started from 1994 to current
release.

A list of Python versions with its released date is given below.

Python Version Released Date

Python 1.0 January 1994

Python 1.5 December 31, 1997

Python 1.6 September 5, 2000

Python 2.0 October 16, 2000

Python 2.1 April 17, 2001

 Python 2.2 December 21, 2001

Python 2.3 July 29, 2003

Python 2.4 November 30, 2004

Python 2.5 September 19, 2006

Python 2.6 October 1, 2008

Python 2.7 July 3, 2010

Python 3.0 December 3, 2008

Python 3.1 June 27, 2009

Python 3.2 February 20, 2011

Python 3.3 September 29, 2012

Python 3.4 March 16, 2014

Python 3.5 September 13, 2015

Python 3.6 December 23, 2016

Python 3.7 June 27, 2018

Python 3.8 October 14, 2019

Python Features

Python provides many useful features which make it popular and valuable from the
other programming languages. It supports object-oriented programming, procedural
programming approaches and provides dynamic memory allocation. We have listed
below a few essential features.

• Easy to Learn and Use

Python is easy to learn as compared to other programming languages. Its syntax is

straightforward and much the same as the English language. There is no use of the
semicolon or curly-bracket, the indentation defines the code block. It is the
recommended programming language for beginners.

• Expressive Language
Python can perform complex tasks using a few lines of code. A simple example, the
hello world program you simply type print("Hello World"). It will take only one
line to execute, while Java or C takes multiple lines.

• Interpreted Language

Python is an interpreted language; it means the Python program is executed one line
at a time. The advantage of being interpreted language, it makes debugging easy and
portable.

• Cross-platform Language

Python can run equally on different platforms such as Windows, Linux, UNIX, and
Macintosh, etc. So, we can say that Python is a portable language. It enables
programmers to develop the software for several competing platforms by writing a
program only once.

• Free and Open Source

Python is freely available for everyone. It is freely available on its official

website www.python.org. It has a large community across the world that is
dedicatedly working towards make new python modules and functions. Anyone can
contribute to the Python community. The open-source means, "Anyone can
download its source code without paying any penny."

• Object-Oriented Language

Python supports object-oriented language and concepts of classes and objects come
into existence. It supports inheritance, polymorphism, and encapsulation, etc. The
object-oriented procedure helps to programmer to write reusable code and develop
applications in less code.

• Extensible

It implies that other languages such as C/C++ can be used to compile the code and
thus it can be used further in our Python code. It converts the program into byte
code, and any platform can use that byte code.

• Large Standard Library

It provides a vast range of libraries for the various fields such as machine learning,
web developer, and also for the scripting. There are various machine learning
libraries, such as Tensor flow, Pandas, Numpy, Keras, and Pytorch, etc. Django,
flask, pyramids are the popular framework for Python web development.

• GUI Programming Support

Graphical User Interface is used for the developing Desktop application. PyQT5,
Tkinter, Kivy are the libraries which are used for developing the web application.

• Integrated

It can be easily integrated with languages like C, C++, and JAVA, etc. Python runs
code line by line like C,C++ Java. It makes easy to debug the code.

• Embeddable

The code of the other programming language can use in the Python source code. We
can use Python source code in another programming language as well. It can embed
other language into our code.

• Dynamic Memory Allocation

In Python, we don't need to specify the data-type of the variable. When we assign
some value to the variable, it automatically allocates the memory to the variable at
run time. Suppose we are assigned integer value 15 to x, then we don't need to write
int x = 15. Just write x = 15.