Programmers have already developed various Programming languages like Java, Ruby, C, C++, e.t.c. People are still developing new programming languages according to the community requirement. For example Julia, It is one of them. Beginners who come in the Programming field often confuse, which programming language should they choose for the long term. Automation is the Future. In fact, You will see Data Science, Big Data, Machine learning, Internet of Things, everywhere in the coming years. Companies and developers are migrating from their existing language to Python language. This article is an introduction to Python Programming. To learn Python with basics is always the best approach.
Python is a very popular language. You can see the Google trend picture below for the search term “Python language”. It clearly shows the interest and popularity of Python language for the last five years.
Introduction to Python programming History/Timeline
In this section, you will know the history as well as the timeline of the Python programming language. Guido van Rossum conceived Python in late 1980. Python 0.9.0 was the first version and released in the Year 1991. It reached to the number of people through alt.sources. In January 1991, Python 1.0 released. In fact, it came with the many functional programming tools like lamda, map, filter, and reduce. comp.lang.python formed which increase Python’s user-base. Python 1.2 was released in 1995. By version 1.5 Python had integrated several new features like.
- Keyword arguments
- Complex numbers support
- The basic form of data-hiding
In 2000, Python 2.0 released with the main features like lists and garbage collection. Python 2.2 released in 2001 with features like.
- Unification of types and classes into one hierarchy
- Object-oriented
- Generators added like iteration e.t.c.
Python 3.0 is the current major version of Python. It comes with major modifications from the previous versions like.
- Changing of print to recognize it as an inbuilt function, not a statement. Print now become a function.
- Python 3.0 removed Python 2 input function but also renamed the raw_input function to input.
- The list has been used instead of Views and iterators.
- The Rules have been simplified for ordering comparisons. For example, a Heterogeneous list cannot be sort. It means that all elements in the list are not comparable to each other.
- Only one integer type available i.e. int.
- The division of integer returns a float instead of an integer.
There are many minor versions released in between the major versions. I have attached the screenshot of the minor versions released with their corresponding year.
Features of Python
You have known the history, timeline, and some introduction to python programming. Now You are waiting to know the major features of Python Programming language, Right!. There are many features of Python. But we are considering the major features of it. Below are the features of Python Programming language.
Easy to Use
Python is a very high-level language. It is just like the English language. Therefore it’s a very easy and programmer-friendly language. You can easily memorize the syntax of the language.
Cross Platform Language
It is cross platform language and not are dependent on devices. Thus making Python easy to run on different OS like Windows, Linux, Unix, Macintosh, e.t.c. You can also say it as compile once and run anywhere.
Larger Support Community
Python is open source language. Thus making it more reachable to developers. Due to open source language, it has a larger support community. It means you can get answers to any code related questions from the community users. Therefore making Python language very helpful for the faster development of the project.
OOPS( Object Oriented Programming)
Classes and objects are very important for any programming language. In fact, These are parts of Object Oriented Programming. Python support it.
Use of Other Programming Language Code
You already have knowledge of basic programming languages like c, c++, e.t.c. You can use c,c++ code in Python Language, and compile it. So, if you have some run able code of c++ e.t.c then you can easily use that code in python code to run the entire code.
Libraries
Python has a large list of libraries. For example, in machine learning, you can use scikit-learn framework. Django, Flask for web development in Python. Therefore python makes it easy for the developer to build their projects at a faster rate with less effort.
GUI( Graphical User Interface)
Python can be used to develop a Graphical User Interface. There are many options for it. You can use Tkinter, wxPython, Jpython for developing GUIs which are the major options.
Integration
C, C++, Java, e.t.c are other languages. In fact, you will see many projects are built on it. You can easily integrate your Python code with them.
Above are the major features of the Python Programming language. In the next section, you will know the major applications of Python.
Applications of Python
You have some knowledge about history, timeline of Python. You know the features of Python. Now, you will know the application of Python in this article introduction to the python programming language. Although there are various applications of Python, here you will know the most used applications of Python.
Web and Internet Development
Python has different options for web development. There are many frameworks like Django, Pyramid for website development. Flask and Bottle are other micro-frameworks. CMS is a content management system to manage your content like a blog. Python provides Plone and Django cms for this.
Standard Library of Python supports many internet protocols like HTML, XML, JSON, Email processing e.t.c.
Scientific and Numeric Computation
Python is largely used in scientific and numeric computing. It has various packages for computation. Some of them are SciPy which is a package of mathematics, science, and engineering.
Python is widely used in data analysis. Pandas is a python library for data analysis. Ipython uses for editing and recording of work sessions. It supports visualizations and parallel computing.
Business Applications
Python is also used to build ERP and e-commerce systems. Odoo is all in one management software for business applications. Tryton is high level general purpose application platform for business applications.
Software Development
Python is generally used as a language for software development. You can build, test, many projects using it. Scons used for build control. Buildbot and Apache Gump used for automated testing and compilation. Bug tracking and project management are important tasks. Rounup or Trac uses for this.
End Notes
Python is a popular and fastest growing programming language. It has many packages and libraries which makes a developer to build projects at less effort. The article introduction to python programming covers the entire python introduction like its history, timeline, features, and various application of python. I hope this article must have solved your query about python. Anyways Don’t forget to subscribe to our blog for the latest post on introduction to python programming. You may write your suggestions and comment in the comment box below. You may also request new articles, You enjoy to interact with you.
Thanks
Data Science Learner Team
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