What is Python and why it is named as Python?
What is the Python Language?
An object-oriented, high level, open-source programming language. It has been ranked as no. 1 by IEEE in 2018 which justifies the popularity the language has gained in such a short time span. It is an interpreted language that is also generally used to fulfill many purposes.
Characteristics of Python:
- It is an Interpreted, High-level language.
- Code readability is better as compared to other languages as it has much simpler syntax and simple English keywords.
- It allows using all the programming paradigm such as Structural paradigm, Functional paradigm as well as Object-Oriented Paradigm.
- It uses garbage collector for allocation are de-allocation of memory.
Origin:
This language was first created and programmed by “Guido Van Rossum” and was released in “1991”. The idea of this language was conceived from the ABC language in the late 1980s. The first version was released by the name of “Python 2.0” in 2000 followed by “Python 3” in 2008 with better interpretability and precision.
Python 2 language is now discontinued (5 years late than the plan) in 2020 with last release “Python 2.7.18”. Although Python 3 is available with the latest version “Python 3.8.2”
The story behind the name:
People link the name of the language with species of snakes, snakes are also used on the cover of many books but the assumption is not true. Guido Van Russom named the language after the television show “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” he also used many jokes from the t.v series in his examples and tutorials.
Purposes served by language:
- Web Development: Python framework such as Django is used for Web development.
- Desktop Application: Python offers a GUI library that is helpful in developing GUI.
- Software Development: Easy readability, oops concept and other features provide great support to the developer.
- Analytics: Python offers various packages such as SciPy, Pandas, Numpy which are used for scientific and mathematical operation.
- Console based application: These applications are also built using python such as Ipython.
