Actually, the name of the programming language refers to a famous comedian troupe with the name of ‘Monty Python’ or the Pythons. Those comedians run a show in a BBC program television which is very famous and it is called Monty Python’s Flying Circus. In order to get specific and detail information, just visit the article in this link.
The language itself is originated through the hands of well-known developer, ‘Guido Van Rossum’. It is started in 1989 where Andrew Tanenbaum from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam asked ‘Guido Van Rossum’ about the suitable programming language for Amoeba device. The main purpose is to develop a distributed operating system for Amoeba device. In order to fulfill the request, Guido Van Rossum started to develop a programming language in early 1990s. At that time Guido Van Rossum himself is in Stichting Mathematisch Centrum (CWI), for further information about CWI just click on this link, where it exist in Netherland. He is well-known for his expertise in ABC and Modula+ where it is actually an interpreted language and compatible with multiplatform. This programming language also becoming the successor of the ABC language where he himself remains as Python’s principal author despite of many contributions from others.
So, Python 1.0 released in January 1994. In 1995, he continue worked on Python in Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) in Reston, Virginia where the information about CRNI is available in this link. The next main release of python where it is available in June 1997 is Python 1.5. In this version, there is a feature of keyword argument and complex number. In Python 1.6 which is released later in September 2000 where the licensed is eventually change into GPL-compatible license where in the previous one is still under CNRI-Licensed. In Python 1.6, there is also a release of Python distribution utilities (distutils) where it is the actual early package manager.
Later on, in May 2000, Guido Van Rossum and the Python core development team moved to BeOpen.com to form the BeOpen PythonLabs team. In October of the same year, the PythonLabs team moved to Digital Creations. Visit this link to know more about Digital Creations where currently known as Zope Corporation. Where at that time, python 2.0 is released with additional features of List Comprehensions, Garbage Collections and it is licensed under Python Software Foundation License. In 2001, the Python Software Foundation where the official website is available in this link was formed, a non-profit organization created specifically to own Python-related Intellectual Property. One of the member sponsoring the PSF is the Zope Corporation.
Starting from Python 2.0, there is a PEP (Python Enhancement Proposal) where the definition of it exist in this link. Basically, according to the link, A PEP is a design document providing information to the Python community, or describing a new feature for Python or its processes or environment. The PEP should provide a concise technical specification of the feature and a rationale for the feature.
Every additional enhancement will be included in PEP before it is executed into the Python programming language. Generally speaking, PEP is available to regulate every additional enhancement in order to be the primary mechanisms for proposing major new features, for collecting community input on an issue, and for documenting the design decisions that have gone into Python.
In December 2002, Python 2.2 is released. In this version there is additional integration types such as in C programming language for an example float, double and also the additional ‘class’ reserved keyword. In Python 2.5 which came in September 2006, there is an additional ‘with’ statement included. Furthermore, Python 2.7 available in July 2010 and it is the final version of python with the version of 2.x. This version will be supported until 2020.
So, how about the next version of python which is started with the version of 3.x ?. Actually, in December 2008, python 3.0 is released along with the multi-paradigm redesign and the compability of the previous version. Move on in June 2009, python 3.1 is released with the additional feature of ordered dictionary and format string. In February 2011, there is a stable ABI Angparse feature to be able to support backward compatibility included in the released version of python 3.2. Continue on in September 2012, python 3.3 releaesd with several additional features. One of them is a new feature for initializing virtual environment to be able to create an isolated environment for development using python with ‘virtualenv’. Another features included are implicit namespace, flexible string, OS and IO Exception not to mention the python launcher for Windows operating system.
In March 2014, in python 2014 ‘pip’ is included to be able to install packages and also several new modules. Next in September 2015, python 3.5 available with coroutines and matrix operator. Furthermore in python 3.6 released in December 2016, there are bunches of new several additional features such as fomart string literal, underscore in numeric literal, variable annotations, asynchronous generator and comprehensions. The development of python 3.7 that came in June 2018 there is postponed evaluation of type annotations and on some information it will be available in python 4.x. Continue on the series of python 3.x, in python 3.8 released in October 2018, new syntax of assignment in the form of “:=” is available. Another feature included in python 3.8 is positional only parameters, f-string and several improved modules.
In 2020, there is a plan of a new version of python 3.9. In this year, there is also a warning for the end of support term for python 2.7. So, the development of python in the last 30 years is quite aggressive. Many years have come but those who want to learn python programming language can start by downloading the python itself in this link. In order to start developing with python programming language, an IDE (Integretated Development Environment) will be one among the option to do it. There are many IDEs for python available such as Pycharm. Using Interactive Python Shell is also another option for developing using python programming language such as iPython and execute it further in Spyder, Jupyter notebook. The last one is using a text editor for an example Visual Code Editor.