About Python(programming language)

Designed by: Guido van Rossum

About Inventor
Guido van Rossum (born 31 January 1960) is a Dutch computer programmer who is best known as the author of the Python programming language. In the Python community, Van Rossum is known as a “Benevolent Dictator for Life” (BDFL), meaning that he continues to oversee the Python development process, making decisions where necessary. He is currently employed by Google, where he spends half his time working on Python development.
Van Rossum was born and grew up in the Netherlands, where he received a masters degree in mathematics and computer science from the University of Amsterdam in 1982. He later worked for various research institutes, including the Dutch National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI), Amsterdam, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, Maryland, and the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), Reston, Virginia.In December 2005, Van Rossum was hired by Google. He wrote a web based code review tool for Google in Python.

About Python
Python is a general-purpose high-level programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive. Its use of indentation for block delimiters is unusual among popular programming languages.

Usage
Python is often used as a scripting language for web applications, e.g. via mod_python for the Apache web server. With Web Server Gateway Interface a standard API has been developed to facilitate these applications. Web application frameworks or application servers like Django, Pylons, TurboGears, web2py and Zope support developers in the design and maintenance of complex applications. Libraries like NumPy, Scipy and Matplotlib allow Python to be used effectively in scientific computing.
Python has seen extensive use in the information security industry, including exploit development. Python has been successfully embedded in a number of software products as a scripting language, including in finite element method software such as Abaqus, 3D animation packages such as Maya, MotionBuilder, Softimage, modo, and Blender, and 2D imaging programs like GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus, and Paint Shop Pro. ESRI is now promoting Python as the best choice for writing scripts in ArcGIS. It has even been used in several videogames.

Syntax and semantics
Python was intended to be a highly readable language. It is designed to have an uncluttered visual layout, frequently using English keywords where other languages use punctuation. Python requires less boilerplate than traditional manifestly typed structured languages such as C or Pascal, and has a smaller number of syntactic exceptions and special cases than either of these. Python uses whitespace indentation, rather than curly braces or keywords, to delimit blocks (a feature also known as the off-side rule). An increase in indentation comes after certain statements; a decrease in indentation signifies the end of the current block.

Methods
Methods on objects are functions attached to the object's class; the syntax instance.method(argument) is, for normal methods and functions, syntactic sugar for Class.method(instance, argument). Python methods have an explicit self parameter to access instance data, in contrast to the implicit self in some other object-oriented programming languages (for example, Java, C++ or Ruby).

Standard library
Python has a large standard library, commonly cited as one of Python's greatest strengths, providing pre-written tools suited to many tasks. This is deliberate and has been described as a "batteries included" Python philosophy. The modules of the standard library can be augmented with custom modules written in either C or Python. Recently, Boost C++ Libraries includes a library, Boost.Python, to enable interoperability between C++ and Python. Because of the wide variety of tools provided by the standard library, combined with the ability to use a lower-level language such as C and C++, which is already capable of interfacing between other libraries, Python can be a powerful glue language between languages and tools.
The standard library is particularly well tailored to writing Internet-facing applications, with a large number of standard formats and protocols (such as MIME and HTTP) already supported. Modules for creating graphical user interfaces, connecting to relational databases, arithmetic with arbitrary precision decimals, manipulating regular expressions, and doing unit testing are also included.
Some parts of the standard library are covered by specifications (for example, the WSGI implementation wsgiref follows PEP 333), but the majority of the modules are not. They are specified by their code, internal documentation, and test suite (if supplied). However, because most of the standard library is cross-platform Python code, there are only a few modules that must be altered or completely rewritten by alternative implementations.

Commercial Usage
For many operating systems, Python is a standard component; it ships with most Linux distributions, with NetBSD, and OpenBSD, and with Mac OS X. Ubuntu uses the Ubiquity installer, while Red Hat Linux and Fedora use the Anaconda installer, and both installers are written in Python. Gentoo Linux uses Python in its package management system, Portage, and the standard tool to access it, emerge. Pardus uses it for administration and during system boot.
Among the users of Python are YouTube and the original BitTorrent client. Large organizations that make use of Python include Google, Yahoo!, CERN, NASA and ITA. Most of the Sugar software for the One Laptop Per Child XO, now developed at Sugar Labs, is written in Python.

Development
Python development is conducted largely through the Python Enhancement Proposal (or "PEP") process. PEPs are standardized design documents providing general information related to Python, including proposals, descriptions, design rationales, and explanations for language features. Outstanding PEPs are reviewed and commented upon by Van Rossum, the Python project's Benevolent Dictator for Life (leader / language architect). CPython's developers also communicate over a mailing list, python-dev, which is the primary forum for discussion about the language's development; specific issues are discussed in the roundup bug tracker maintained at python.org. Development takes place at the self-hosted svn.python.org.
CPython's public releases come in three types, distinguished by which part of the version number is  

incremented:
• backwards-incompatible versions, where code is expected to break and must be manually ported. The first part of the version number is incremented. These releases happen infrequently—for example, version 3.0 was released 8 years after 2.0.
• major or 'feature' releases, which are largely compatible but introduce new features. The second part of the version number is incremented. These releases are scheduled to occur roughly every 18 months, and each major version is supported by bugfixes for several years after its release.
• bugfix releases, which introduce no new features but fix bugs. The third and final part of the version number is incremented. These releases are made whenever a sufficient number of bugs have been fixed upstream since the last release, or roughly every 3 months. Security vulnerabilities are also patched in bugfix releases.
A number of alpha, beta, and release-candidates are also released as previews and for testing before the final release is made. Although there is a rough schedule for each release, this is often pushed back if the code is not ready. The development team monitor the state of the code by running the large unit test suite during development, and using the buildbot continuous integration system.

Advantages
• Object-Oriented
• Dynamic Type Checking makes it inherently generic – C++ templates for free!
• Free, as in Open Source free
• Portable
• Powerful language constructs / features
• Powerful toolkit / library
• Mixable with other languages
• Easy to use & learn