What is Python

First released in 1991, by Guido van Rossum, Python is a high-level programming language. It is a general-purpose language used by to perform various functions from building video games, to testing microchips, to powering social media sites. Pythons popularity lies in its emphasis on code readability which allows programmers to express concepts in fewer lines of code when compared to other languages like C++and Java. Many operating systems support python, allowing python to run on a wide variety of systems.

Python is the easiest programming language to learn and many veteran programmers are using it. Even a beginner programmer can pick up the language easily since Python has a set of rules known as PEP8 that instructs on how to format code. This means that user will always know where to put new lines and more importantly, that every Python script whether it be written by a novice or a professional, will look similar and be easy to read. Python closely resembles the English language using words like ‘not’ and ‘in’ instead of punctuation as is the case for other languages. This is to reduce visual clutter, since Python is intended to be a highly readable language. Rather than requiring all desired functionality to be built into the language's core, Python was designed to be highly extensible. Python can be embedded in existing applications that need a programmable interface. Van Rossum from the start because of his frustrations with ABC, which espoused the opposite mindset, intended this design of a small core language with a large standard library and an easily extensible interpreter

Being an open source programming language, the code that has accumulated for over twenty years since Python’s inception is available for use by anyone. Users need only to install the freely available software and then access the database from the website pupi.python.org. One of the greatest strengths of Python is its large standard library, which provides tools suited for many tasks. As of 2017, the Python Package Index, the official repository containing third-party software for Python, contains over 107,000 packages offering a wide range of functionality, including: graphical user interfaces, web frameworks, multimedia, databases, networking and communications test frameworks, automation and web scraping, documentation tools, system administration, scientific computing, text processing, image processing.

Currently, Python is the fifth most popular programming language and is consistently ranked as the top ten most popular programming languages. A study by Lutz Prechelt, University of Karlsruhe found that Python is more productive than conventional languages(C and Java) for programming problems involving string manipulation and search in a dictionary. Large organizations that make use of Python include Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo, CERN, and NASA.

Python has user groups everywhere, usually called PUGs and does major conferences on every continent. PyCon, the largest conference in North America sells out its venue every year. To reflect its commitment to diversity, Python had over 30 percent women speakers. PuyCon also offers workshops for young children between the ages of 9 and 16 to get familiar with Python, ultimately helping them to hack or mod games on the Raspberry Pis(a credit card sized computer designed for education).

Python was developed as an easy-to-read language. The language Python was named after the television show Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Many of the examples in learning and tutorials include jokes from the show. Python is an interpreted language that doesn’t need to be compiled to run. A program named interpreter can run Python code on any kind of computer; which means a programmer can change the code and see the results quickly.       

For beginners, Python is considered as a good programming language. Being a high-level language, a programmer can focus on what to work on instead of how to approach it. Moreover, writing programs in Python is time-saving as compared to other languages. It has drawn inspiration from different programming languages like C, C++, Java, Lisp, and Perl. Syntax reading is also easy in Python. Some of its syntaxes are similar to that of C, as it has been written in that language. Python also uses whitespace characters to delimit code which makes it an easy-to-read language.       

Python has gained immense popularity and is being used by thousands of programmers worldwide. Mostly it is used to do simple jobs while a different program is used to do complicated tasks. However, sometimes Python code is used solely in developing a program. The standard library is made up of various functions which come with Python once installed. There are different libraries available on the internet, which makes it possible for Python to perform more stuff. The availability of these libraries makes Python a powerful language. Python is often used in Web Development, Network Programming, Desktop GUIs, Scientific Programming, Game Programming, etc.