1.1.History
Python is a simple indentation programming language that was originated in the late 1980s by Guido van Rossum capable of exception handling and interfacing with the Amoeba operating system. Version 2.0 was released in 2000 with many major new features being the most important of them all the transparency of the language. This was followed by Version 3.0 release in 2008 which had a whole lot of new features. Today we use version 3.7 but there are already plans for releases up to 3.9.
1.2.Features
|
Feature |
Description |
|
Easy to Learn and Use |
Python is easy to learn and use. It is a developer-friendly and high-level programming language. |
|
Expressive Language |
Python language is more expressive means that it is more understandable and readable. |
|
Interpreted Language |
Python 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. |
|
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. |
|
Free and Open Source |
Python language is freely available at the official web address. The source code is also available. Therefore, it is open-source. |
|
Object-Oriented Language |
Python supports object-oriented language and concepts of classes and objects come into existence. |
|
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. |
|
Large Standard Library |
Python has a large and broad library and provides a rich set of modules and functions for rapid application development. |
|
GUI Programming Support |
Graphical user interfaces can be developed using Python. |
|
Integrated |
It can be easily integrated with languages like C, C++, JAVA, etc. |
1.3.Basic Syntax
Python has a very simple and intuitive syntax as you will see across the program. Unlike most of the programming languages, there is no need for a “;” at the end of each expression and the program flow is controlled through indentation.
This is a basic program designed to print on the screen the sum of two numbers: