Python is a high-level, general-purpose programming language.

Its design philosophy

emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation.[31]

Python is dynamically typed and garbage-collected. It supports multiple programming paradigms,

including structured (particularly procedural), object-oriented and functional programming. It is often
described as a "batteries included" language due to its comprehensive standard library.[32][33]

Guido van Rossum began working on Python in the late 1980s as a successor to the ABC
programming language and first released it in 1991 as Python 0.9.0.[34] Python 2.0 was released in
2000. Python 3.0, released in 2008, was a major revision not completely backward-compatible with
earlier versions. Python 2.7.18, released in 2020, was the last release of Python 2.[35]

Python consistently ranks as one of the most popular programming languages, and has gained
widespread use in the machine learning community.[36][37][38][39]

History

The designer of Python, Guido van Rossum, at OSCON 2006

Main article: History of Python
Python was conceived in the late 1980s[40] by Guido van Rossum at Centrum Wiskunde &
Informatica (CWI) in the Netherlands as a successor to the ABC programming language, which was
inspired by SETL,[41] capable of exception handling and interfacing with the Amoeba operating
system.[10] Its implementation began in December 1989.[42] Van Rossum shouldered sole
responsibility for the project, as the lead developer, until 12 July 2018, when he announced his
"permanent vacation" from his responsibilities as Python's "benevolent dictator for life", a title the
Python community bestowed upon him to reflect his long-term commitment as the project's chief
decision-maker.[43] In January 2019, active Python core developers elected a five-member Steering
Council to lead the project.[44][45]

Python 2.0 was released on 16 October 2000, with many major new features such as list
comprehensions, cycle-detecting garbage collection, reference counting, and Unicode support.
[46]
Python 3.0, released on 3 December 2008, with many of its major features backported to
Python 2.6.x[47] and 2.7.x. Releases of Python 3 include the 2to3 utility, which automates the
translation of Python 2 code to Python 3.[48]

Python 2.7's end-of-life was initially set for 2015, then postponed to 2020 out of concern that a large
body of existing code could not easily be forward-ported to Python 3.[49][50] No further security patches
or other improvements will be released for it.[51][52] Currently only 3.8 and later are supported (2023
security issues were fixed in e.g. 3.7.17, the final 3.7.x release[53]).
In 2021 (and again twice in 2022), security updates were expedited, since all Python versions were
insecure (including 2.7[54]) because of security issues leading to possible remote code
execution[55] and web-cache poisoning.[56] In 2022, Python 3.10.4 and 3.9.12 were expedited[57] and
3.8.13, because of many security issues.[58] When Python 3.9.13 was released in May 2022, it was
announced that the 3.9 series (joining the older series 3.8 and 3.7) would only receive security fixes
in the future.[59] On 7 September 2022, four new releases were made due to a potential denial-of-
service attack: 3.10.7, 3.9.14, 3.8.14, and 3.7.14.[60][61]

As of October 2023, Python 3.12 is the stable release, and 3.12 and 3.11 are the only versions with
active (as opposed to just security) support. Notable changes in 3.11 from 3.10 include increased
program execution speed and improved error reporting.[62]

Python 3.12 adds syntax (and in fact every Python since at least 3.5 adds some syntax) to the
language, the new (soft) keyword type (recent releases have added a lot of typing support e.g. new
type union operator in 3.10), and 3.11 for exception handling, and 3.10 the match and case (soft)
keywords, for structural pattern matching statements. Python 3.12 also drops outdated modules and
functionality, and future versions will too, see below in Development section.

Python 3.11 claims to be between 10 and 60% faster than Python 3.10, and Python 3.12 adds
another 5% on top of that. It also has improved error messages, and many other changes.

Since 27 June 2023, Python 3.8 is the oldest supported version of Python (albeit in the 'security
support' phase), due to Python 3.7 reaching end-of-life.[63]

Design philosophy and features

Python is a multi-paradigm programming language. Object-oriented programming and structured
programming are fully supported, and many of their features support functional programming
and aspect-oriented programming (including metaprogramming[64] and metaobjects).[65] Many other
paradigms are supported via extensions, including design by contract[66][67] and logic programming.[68]

Python uses dynamic typing and a combination of reference counting and a cycle-detecting garbage
collector for memory management.[69] It uses dynamic name resolution (late binding), which binds
method and variable names during program execution.

Its design offers some support for functional programming in the Lisp tradition. It
has filter,mapandreduce functions; list comprehensions, dictionaries, sets,
and generator expressions.[70] The standard library has two modules (itertools and functools)
that implement functional tools borrowed from Haskell and Standard ML.[71]

Its core philosophy is summarized in the document The Zen of Python (PEP 20), which
includes aphorisms such as:[72]

 Beautiful is better than ugly.

 Explicit is better than implicit.
 Simple is better than complex.
 Complex is better than complicated.
 Readability counts.
Rather than building all of its functionality into its core, Python was designed to be
highly extensible via modules. This compact modularity has made it particularly popular as a means
of adding programmable interfaces to existing applications. Van Rossum's vision of a small core
language with a large standard library and easily extensible interpreter stemmed from his frustrations
with ABC, which espoused the opposite approach.[40]

Python strives for a simpler, less-cluttered syntax and grammar while giving developers a choice in
their coding methodology. In contrast to Perl's "there is more than one way to do it" motto, Python
embraces a "there should be one—and preferably only one—obvious way to do it" philosophy.
[72]
Alex Martelli, a Fellow at the Python Software Foundation and Python book author, wrote: "To
describe something as 'clever' is not considered a compliment in the Python culture."[73]

Python's developers strive to avoid premature optimization and reject patches to non-critical parts of
the CPython reference implementation that would offer marginal increases in speed at the cost of
clarity.[74] Execution speed can be improved by moving speed-critical functions to extension modules
written in languages such as C, or by using a just-in-time compiler like PyPy. It is also possible
to cross-compile to other languages, but it either doesn't provide the full speed-up that might be
expected, since Python is a very dynamic language, or a restricted subset of Python is compiled,
and possibly semantics are slightly changed.[75] Python's developers aim for it to be fun to use. This is
reflected in its name—a tribute to the British comedy group Monty Python[76]—and in occasionally
playful approaches to tutorials and reference materials, such as the use of the terms "spam" and
"eggs" (a reference to a Monty Python sketch) in examples, instead of the often-used "foo" and
"bar".[77][78]

A common neologism in the Python community is pythonic, which has a wide range of meanings
related to program style. "Pythonic" code may use Python idioms well, be natural or show fluency in
the language, or conform with Python's minimalist philosophy and emphasis on readability. Code
that is difficult to understand or reads like a rough transcription from another programming language
is called unpythonic.[79][80]

Syntax and semantics

Main article: Python syntax and semantics
Python is meant to be an easily readable language. Its formatting is visually uncluttered and often
uses English keywords where other languages use punctuation. Unlike many other languages, it
does not use curly brackets to delimit blocks, and semicolons after statements are allowed but rarely
used. It has fewer syntactic exceptions and special cases than C or Pascal.[81]

Indentation
Main article: Python syntax and semantics § Indentation
Python uses whitespace indentation, rather than curly brackets or keywords, to delimit blocks. An
increase in indentation comes after certain statements; a decrease in indentation signifies the end of
the current block.[82] Thus, the program's visual structure accurately represents its semantic structure.
[83]
This feature is sometimes termed the off-side rule. Some other languages use indentation this
way; but in most, indentation has no semantic meaning. The recommended indent size is four
spaces.[84]

Statements and control flow

Python's statements include:

 The assignment statement, using a single equals sign =

 The if statement, which conditionally executes a block of code, along with else and elif (a
contraction of else-if)
 The for statement, which iterates over an iterable object, capturing each element to a local
variable for use by the attached block
 The while statement, which executes a block of code as long as its condition is true
 The try statement, which allows exceptions raised in its attached code block to be caught and
handled by except clauses (or new syntax except* in Python 3.11 for exception groups[85]); it
also ensures that clean-up code in a finally block is always run regardless of how the block
exits
 The raise statement, used to raise a specified exception or re-raise a caught exception
 The class statement, which executes a block of code and attaches its local namespace to
a class, for use in object-oriented programming
 The def statement, which defines a function or method
 The with statement, which encloses a code block within a context manager (for example,
acquiring a lock before it is run, then releasing the lock; or opening and closing a file),
allowing resource-acquisition-is-initialization (RAII)-like behavior and replacing a common
try/finally idiom[86]
 The break statement, which exits a loop
 The continue statement, which skips the rest of the current iteration and continues with the
next
 The del statement, which removes a variable—deleting the reference from the name to the
value, and producing an error if the variable is referred to before it is redefined
 The pass statement, serving as a NOP, syntactically needed to create an empty code block
 The assert statement, used in debugging to check for conditions that should apply
 The yield statement, which returns a value from a generator function (and also an operator);
used to implement coroutines
 The return statement, used to return a value from a function
 The import and from statements, used to import modules whose functions or variables can be
used in the current program
The assignment statement (=) binds a name as a reference to a separate, dynamically
allocated object. Variables may subsequently be rebound at any time to any object. In Python, a
variable name is a generic reference holder without a fixed data type; however, it always refers
to some object with a type. This is called dynamic typing—in contrast to statically-typed languages,
where each variable may contain only a value of a certain type.

Python does not support tail call optimization or first-class continuations, and, according to Van
Rossum, it never will.[87][88] However, better support for coroutine-like functionality is provided by
extending Python's generators.[89] Before 2.5, generators were lazy iterators; data was passed
unidirectionally out of the generator. From Python 2.5 on, it is possible to pass data back into a
generator function; and from version 3.3, it can be passed through multiple stack levels.[90]