What is Python

Python is a general purpose, dynamic, high-level, and interpreted programming

language. It supports Object Oriented programming approach to develop applications.
It is simple and easy to learn and provides lots of high-level data structures.

Python is easy to learn yet powerful and versatile scripting language, which makes it
attractive for Application Development.

Python's syntax and dynamic typing with its interpreted nature make it an ideal

language for scripting and rapid application development.

Python supports multiple programming pattern, including object-oriented, imperative,

and functional or procedural programming styles.

Python is not intended to work in a particular area, such as web programming. That is
why it is known as multipurpose programming language because it can be used with
web, enterprise, 3D CAD, etc.

We don't need to use data types to declare variable because it is dynamically typed so
we can write a=10 to assign an integer value in an integer variable.

Python makes the development and debugging fast because there is no compilation

step included in Python development, and edit-test-debug cycle is very fast.

Python 2 vs. Python 3

In most of the programming languages, whenever a new version releases, it supports
the features and syntax of the existing version of the language, therefore, it is easier
for the projects to switch in the newer version. However, in the case of Python, the two
versions Python 2 and Python 3 are very much different from each other.

A list of differences between Python 2 and Python 3 are given below:

1. Python 2 uses print as a statement and used as print "something" to print some

string on the console. On the other hand, Python 3 uses print as a function and
used as print("something") to print something on the console.
2. Python 2 uses the function raw_input() to accept the user's input. It returns the
string representing the value, which is typed by the user. To convert it into the
integer, we need to use the int() function in Python. On the other hand, Python 3
uses input() function which automatically interpreted the type of input entered
by the user. However, we can cast this value to any type by using primitive
functions (int(), str(), etc.).
 3. In Python 2, the implicit string type is ASCII, whereas, in Python 3, the implicit
string type is Unicode.
4. Python 3 doesn't contain the xrange() function of Python 2. The xrange() is the
variant of range() function which returns a xrange object that works similar to
Java iterator. The range() returns a list for example the function range(0,3)
contains 0, 1, 2.
5. There is also a small change made in Exception handling in Python 3. It defines a
keyword as which is necessary to be used. We will discuss it in Exception
handling section of Python programming tutorial.

Python Features
Python provides many useful features which make it popular and valuable from the
other programming languages. It supports object-oriented programming,
procedural programming approaches and provides dynamic memory allocation. We
have listed below a few essential features.

1) Easy to Learn and Use

Python is easy to learn as compared to other programming languages. Its syntax is
straightforward and much the same as the English language. There is no use of the
semicolon or curly-bracket, the indentation defines the code block. It is the
recommended programming language for beginners.

2) Expressive Language
Python can perform complex tasks using a few lines of code. A simple example, the
hello world program you simply type print("Hello World"). It will take only one
line to execute, while Java or C takes multiple lines.

3) Interpreted Language
Python is an interpreted language; it means the Python program is executed one
line at a time. The advantage of being interpreted language, it makes debugging
easy and portable.

4) Cross-platform Language
Python can run equally on different platforms such as Windows, Linux, UNIX, and
Macintosh, etc. So, we can say that Python is a portable language. It enables
programmers to develop the software for several competing platforms by writing a
program only once.
5) Free and Open Source
Python is freely available for everyone. It is freely available on its official
website www.python.org. It has a large community across the world that is
dedicatedly working towards make new python modules and functions. Anyone can
contribute to the Python community. The open-source means, "Anyone can
download its source code without paying any penny."

6) Object-Oriented Language
Python supports object-oriented language and concepts of classes and objects come
into existence. It supports inheritance, polymorphism, and encapsulation, etc. The
object-oriented procedure helps to programmer to write reusable code and develop
applications in less code.

7) Extensible
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. It converts the program into byte
code, and any platform can use that byte code.

8) Large Standard Library

It provides a vast range of libraries for the various fields such as machine learning,
web developer, and also for the scripting. There are various machine learning
libraries, such as Tensor flow, Pandas, Numpy, Keras, and Pytorch, etc. Django,
flask, pyramids are the popular framework for Python web development.

9) GUI Programming Support

Graphical User Interface is used for the developing Desktop application. PyQT5,
Tkinter, Kivy are the libraries which are used for developing the web application.

10) Integrated
It can be easily integrated with languages like C, C++, and JAVA, etc. Python runs
code line by line like C,C++ Java. It makes easy to debug the code.

11. Embeddable
The code of the other programming language can use in the Python source code.
We can use Python source code in another programming language as well. It can
embed other language into our code.
12. Dynamic Memory Allocation
In Python, we don't need to specify the data-type of the variable. When we assign
some value to the variable, it automatically allocates the memory to the variable at
run time. Suppose we are assigned integer value 15 to x, then we don't need to
write int x = 15. Just write x = 15

Python History and Versions

o Python laid its foundation in the late 1980s.
o The implementation of Python was started in December 1989 by Guido Van
Rossum at CWI in Netherland.
o In February 1991, Guido Van Rossum published the code (labeled version
0.9.0) to alt.sources.
o In 1994, Python 1.0 was released with new features like lambda, map, filter, and
reduce.
o Python 2.0 added new features such as list comprehensions, garbage collection
systems.
o On December 3, 2008, Python 3.0 (also called "Py3K") was released. It was
designed to rectify the fundamental flaw of the language.
o ABC programming language is said to be the predecessor of Python language,
which was capable of Exception Handling and interfacing with the Amoeba
Operating System.
o The following programming languages influence Python:
o ABC language.
o Modula-3

Python Version List

Python programming language is being updated regularly with new features and
supports. There are lots of update in Python versions, started from 1994 to current
release.

A list of Python versions with its released date is given below.

Python Version Released Date

Python 1.0 January 1994

Python 1.5 December 31, 1997

Python 1.6 September 5, 2000

Python 2.0 October 16, 2000

Python 2.1 April 17, 2001

Python 2.2 December 21, 2001

Python 2.3 July 29, 2003

Python 2.4 November 30, 2004

Python 2.5 September 19, 2006

Python 2.6 October 1, 2008

Python 2.7 July 3, 2010

Python 3.0 December 3, 2008

Python 3.1 June 27, 2009

Python 3.2 February 20, 2011

Python 3.3 September 29, 2012

 Python 3.4 March 16, 2014

Python 3.5 September 13, 2015

Python 3.6 December 23, 2016

Python 3.7 June 27, 2018

Python 3.8 October 14, 2019

Python Applications
Python is known for its general-purpose nature that makes it applicable in almost
every domain of software development. Python makes its presence in every
emerging field. It is the fastest-growing programming language and can develop
any application.

Here, we are specifying application areas where Python can be applied.

1) Web Applications
We can use Python to develop web applications. It provides libraries to handle
internet protocols such as HTML and XML, JSON, Email processing, request,
beautifulSoup, Feedparser, etc. One of Python web-framework named Django is
used on Instagram. Python provides many useful frameworks, and these are given
below:

o Django and Pyramid framework(Use for heavy applications)

o Flask and Bottle (Micro-framework)
o Plone and Django CMS (Advance Content management)
2) Desktop GUI Applications
The GUI stands for the Graphical User Interface, which provides a smooth
interaction to any application. Python provides a Tk GUI library to develop a user
interface. Some popular GUI libraries are given below.

o Tkinter or Tk
o wxWidgetM
o Kivy (used for writing multitouch applications )
o PyQt or Pyside

3) Console-based Application
Console-based applications run from the command-line or shell. These applications
are computer program which are used commands to execute. This kind of
application was more popular in the old generation of computers. Python can
develop this kind of application very effectively. It is famous for having REPL, which
means the Read-Eval-Print Loop that makes it the most suitable language for the
command-line applications.

Python provides many free library or module which helps to build the command-line
apps. The necessary IO libraries are used to read and write. It helps to parse
argument and create console help text out-of-the-box. There are also advance
libraries that can develop independent console apps.

4) Software Development
Python is useful for the software development process. It works as a support
language and can be used to build control and management, testing, etc.

o SCons is used to build control.

o Buildbot and Apache Gumps are used for automated continuous
compilation and testing.
o Round or Trac for bug tracking and project management.

5) Scientific and Numeric

This is the era of Artificial intelligence where the machine can perform the task the
same as the human. Python language is the most suitable language for Artificial
intelligence or machine learning. It consists of many scientific and mathematical
libraries, which makes easy to solve complex calculations.
Implementing machine learning algorithms require complex mathematical
calculation. Python has many libraries for scientific and numeric such as Numpy,
Pandas, Scipy, Scikit-learn, etc. If you have some basic knowledge of Python, you
need to import libraries on the top of the code. Few popular frameworks of machine
libraries are given below.

o SciPy
o Scikit-learn
o NumPy
o Pandas
o Matplotlib

6) Business Applications
Business Applications differ from standard applications. E-commerce and ERP are
an example of a business application. This kind of application requires extensively,
scalability and readability, and Python provides all these features.

Oddo is an example of the all-in-one Python-based application which offers a range

of business applications. Python provides a Tryton platform which is used to
develop the business application.

7) Audio or Video-based Applications

Python is flexible to perform multiple tasks and can be used to create multimedia
applications. Some multimedia applications which are made by using Python
are TimPlayer, cplay, etc. The few multimedia libraries are given below.

o Gstreamer
o Pyglet
o QT Phonon

8) 3D CAD Applications
The CAD (Computer-aided design) is used to design engineering related
architecture. It is used to develop the 3D representation of a part of a system.
Python can create a 3D CAD application by using the following functionalities.

o Fandango (Popular )
o CAMVOX
o HeeksCNC
 o AnyCAD
o RCAM

9) Enterprise Applications
Python can be used to create applications that can be used within an Enterprise or
an Organization. Some real-time applications are OpenERP, Tryton, Picalo, etc.

10) Image Processing Application

Python contains many libraries that are used to work with the image. The image
can be manipulated according to our requirements. Some libraries of image
processing are given below.

o OpenCV
o Pillow
o SimpleITK

In this topic, we have described all types of applications where Python plays an
essential role in the development of these applications. In the next tutorial, we will
learn more concepts about Python.