Python is a general-purpose interpreted, interactive, object-oriented, and high-level programming language. Like Perl, Python source code is also available under the GNU General Public License (GPL). This tutorial gives enough understanding on Python programming language.

• Created by Guido van Rossum.
• First released in 1991.
• Supports object-oriented programming with classes and multiple inheritance.
• Comes with a large standard library.
• Includes a Integrated development environment(IDLE).
• Runs on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux as Freeware.

Why python?

• Easy to Use: Python is very easy to use and high level language. Thus it is programmer-friendly language.
• Expressive Language: Python language is more expressive. The sense of expressive is the code is easily understandable. It is almost similar to English language.
• GUI Programming: Graphical user interfaces can be developed using Python.
• Interpreted Language: Python is an interpreted language that means interpreter executes code line by line . (Interpreter translates just one statement of the program at a time into machine code. compiler scans the entire program and translates the whole of it into machine code at once.)This makes debugging easy and thus suitable for beginners.

Where is Python used?

Python is a popular programming language and it is used in almost every technical field. The various areas of Python use are given below.

• Data Science
• Date Mining
• Desktop Applications
• Console-based Applications
• Mobile Applications
• Software Development
• Artificial Intelligence
• Web Applications
• Enterprise Applications
• 3D CAD Applications
• Machine Learning
• Computer Vision or Image Processing Applications.
• Speech Recognitions

Characteristics of Python

Following are important characteristics of Python Programming

• It supports functional and structured programming methods as well as OOP.
• It can be used as a scripting language or can be compiled to byte-code for building large applications.
• It provides very high-level dynamic data types and supports dynamic type checking.
• It supports automatic garbage collection.
• It can be easily integrated with C, C++, COM, ActiveX, CORBA, and Java.

Hello World using Python

Just to give you a little excitement about Python, I’m going to give you a small conventional Python Hello World program.

print ("Hello, Python!");

Prerequisites

You should have a basic understanding of Computer Programming terminologies. A basic understanding of any of the programming languages is a plus.