Python

Python is a general-purpose, dynamically typed, interpreted programming language with a deliberately small core grammar and an extensive standard library. The language emphasises readability, the principle of “one obvious way to do it”, and the explicit handling of complexity through clear naming and modular structure. Programs are translated to bytecode at run time and executed by a virtual machine; the reference implementation is CPython, written in C, with alternative implementations including PyPy (a tracing JIT), Jython (targeting the Java Virtual Machine), and IronPython (targeting the .NET runtime).

History

Python was created by Guido van Rossum at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in the Netherlands beginning in late 1989, with version 0.9.0 released publicly in February 1991. Python 1.0 followed in January 1994. Python 2.0 (2000) introduced list comprehensions and a cycle-detecting garbage collector; Python 3.0 (2008) was a deliberately backward-incompatible revision intended to correct long-standing language defects, principally around Unicode handling and integer division. The Python 2 series received support until 1 January 2020, after which Python 3 became the sole supported lineage. Subsequent revisions have followed an annual cadence: Python 3.6 (2016) introduced f-strings; 3.8 (2019) added the assignment expression :=; 3.10 (2021) introduced structural pattern matching; 3.12 and 3.13 have substantially improved interpreter performance and introduced an experimental free-threaded build that removes the Global Interpreter Lock.

Hello world

print("Hello, world!")

Execution with the reference interpreter:

python hello.py

The conventional development workflow uses a virtual environment — a directory containing an isolated Python installation and its dependencies — created through the standard library venv module:

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

Modern projects frequently substitute uv, poetry, or pdm for the standalone pip and venv workflow; each provides project-aware dependency resolution and lockfile management on top of the same standard distribution.