History of Python

Python is a high level programming language which was developed by Guido Van Rossum in the late 1980s at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in the Netherlands. The paper was published in 1991 and written to be read rather than to be written. It was designed to emphasize code readablity and simplicity, making it accessible for both beginners and experts. Here is a short timeline:

Early releases

• Python 1.0 (1991): It had the typical features such as exception handling, user-defined functions, and module. Dynamic typing was also supported, and simplicity was given much importance.

• Python 2.0 (2000): It included list comprehensions, garbage collection through reference counting, and other new features with serious backward compatibility issues, hence making the migration process difficult.

Modern Python

• Python 3.0 (2008): It was a major revision that aimed to solve the design issues in Python 2.x. It brought drastic changes like new syntax for the print() function and also introduced distinction between bytes vs. str. These changes could not work backward, so the gradual adoption process was set up.

• End of Python 2 (2020): Support for Python 2 officially ended on January 1, 2020. This marked a full transition to Python 3.

Growth and Popularity

Python has recently become one of the most used and preferred programming languages for various reasons.

• From big data analysis (Pandas, NumPy), web development (Django, Flask) and machine learning (TensorFlow, PyTorch), the languages have huge libraries and frameworks spanning across so many domains
• Its versatility being used in Web development, automation, scientific computing, data science, artificial intelligence, and all the others.
• A strong and active community that maintains and grows the environment.