Introduction To python

Python is a general purpose, dynamic, high level, interactive and interpreted programming language. It supports Object Oriented programming approach to develop applications. Python is a cross-platform programming language, meaning, it runs on multiple platforms like Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Unix and has even been ported to the Java and .NET virtual machines.It is ideally designed for rapid prototyping of complex applications.It is free and open source. It is simple and easy to learn and provides lots of high-level data structures.
DOWNLOAD HERE : http://www.python.org

History Of Python :

Python is a fairly old language created by Guido Van Rossum. The design began in the late 1980s and was first released in February 1991 at the National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science in the Netherlands.
In late 1980s, Guido Van Rossum was working on the Amoeba distributed operating system group. He wanted to use an interpreted language like ABC (ABC has simple easy-to-understand syntax) that could access the Amoeba system calls. So, he decided to create a language that was extensible. This led to design of a new language which was later named Python. As a matter of fact , Python is influenced by many other languages, including ABC, Modula-3, C, C++, Algol-68, SmallTalk, and Unix shell and other scripting languages.
Python is copyrighted. Like Perl, Python source code is now available under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Python is now maintained by a core development team at the institute, although Guido van Rossum still holds a vital role in directing its progress.

Why It Was Named Python ?

If you are thinking about snake , no it wasn’t. It wasn’t named after a dangerous snake. Rossum was fan of a comedy series from late seventies. The name “Python” was adopted from the same series “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”.

Features Of Python :

1. Easy To Learn : Python is easy to learn and use. It is developer-friendly and high level programming language.It  has a very simple and elegant syntax. It’s much easier to read and write Python programs compared to other languages like: C++, Java, C#. It allows you to focus on the solution rather than syntax.If you are a new learner to languages, it’s a great choice to start your journey with Python.
2. Object Oriented Language : It supports object-oriented features and techniques of programming. Object oriented programming (OOP) helps you solve a complex problem intuitively.
   With OOP, you are able to divide these complex problems into smaller sets by creating objects.
3. Free and Open Source : It is free to use and distribute Python, even for commercial use. Not only can you use and distribute softwares built on python, but you can even make changes to the Python’s source code.
4. Interpreted  Language : It is an interpreted language i.e. interpreter executes the code line by line at a time. This makes debugging easy and thus suitable for beginners. Python code  is fairly easy to maintain
5. Portable : Python programs can be moved  from one platform to another, and run it without any changes.It runs seamlessly on almost all platforms including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
6. Extensible and Embeddable : 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. Suppose an application requires high performance. You can easily combine pieces of C/C++ or other languages with Python code.
7. Large Standard Libraries : Python has a large and broad library and prvides rich set of module and functions for rapid application development. Standard libraries in Python are well tested and used by hundreds of people. So you can be sure that it won’t break your application.
8. GUI Programming : GUI applications can be created and ported to many system calls, libraries and windows systems, such as Windows MFC, Macintosh, and the X Window system of Unix.
9. High Level Langauge : It automatically supports  daunting tasks like memory management, garbage collection and so on.Likewise, when you run Python code, it automatically converts your code to the language your computer understands. No need to worry about any lower-level operations.
10. Wide Range Of Database support : It  provides interfaces to all major commercial databases.

Major Use Of Python :

1. To create web and desktop application
2. Graphical User Interfaces development for python based application
3. It is widely used in Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Generation, scientific and numeric computing, Neural Networks and other advanced fields of Computer Science.
4. Game Programming and software development
5. To build Bussiness applications like ERP and e-commerce systems.