Python Programming Language

Python Language

• Python is a high-level, general-purpose programming language.
• It emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation.
• Python is dynamically typed and garbage-collected.
• It supports multiple programming paradigms, including structured, object-oriented, and functional programming.

History of Python

• Python was invented in the late 1980s by Guido van Rossum as a successor to the ABC programming language.
• Guido van Rossum began working on Python in the late 1980s and released it in 1991 as Python 0.9.0.
• Python 2.0 was released in 2000, and Python 3.0 was released in 2008, which was a major revision not completely backward-compatible with earlier versions.
• Python 2.7.18, released in 2020, was the last release of Python 2.

Python Development

• Guido van Rossum was the lead developer of Python until 2018, when he announced his "permanent vacation" from his responsibilities.
• In 2019, a five-member Steering Council was elected to lead the project.
• Python 2.0 introduced many major new features, including list comprehensions, cycle-detecting garbage collection, reference counting, and Unicode support.
• Python 3.0 included many of its major features backported to Python 2.6.x and 2.7.x.

Python Releases

• Python 2.7's end-of-life was initially set for 2015, then postponed to 2020.
• Only Python 3.8 and later are currently supported.
• Python 3.10.4 and 3.9.12 were expedited in 2022 due to security issues.
• Python 3.9.13 was released in May 2022, with the announcement that the 3.9 series would only receive security fixes in the future.
• As of October 2023, Python 3.12 is the stable release, and 3.12 and 3.11 are the only versions with active support.

Notable Changes in Python

• Python 3.10 added the | union type operator and the match and case keywords.
• Python 3.11 expanded exception handling functionality and increased program execution speed.
• Python 3.12 added the new keyword type.