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About Python

Python is a high-level, general purpose programming language. It has the following features:

  1. It is free and open source, and runs on Windows, GNU/Linux and macOS
  2. It is an interpreted language, meaning code is executed line by line rather than being compiled to machine code before execution
  3. It is dynamically type-checked, meaning the type of a variable is determined at runtime rather than declared in advance, and garbage-collected, meaning memory management is handled automatically
  4. It supports multiple programming paradigms, including procedural, object oriented and functional
  5. Python emphasises code readability through the use of significant indentation — indentation is required by the language, not optional
  6. Its current version is 3, with the latest release being 3.14.3 (as of March 2026)
  7. It has a rich set of built-in data types such as list, tuple, set and dictionary
  8. In Python, everything is an object — not only variables but also functions and classes
  9. When using object oriented programming in Python, a large number of special built-in methods called dunder methods allow you to customise the behaviour of objects and overload operators
  10. Python has a large and active community, which means help, tutorials and answers to common problems are easy to find
  11. Python is known for its extensive collection of built-in and third-party packages that make even complex tasks straightforward. It is widely used in data science, machine learning, web development, automation and scientific computing

Python was created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991. The name is not derived from the snake but from the British comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus, which van Rossum was a fan of. Python 2 and Python 3 were incompatible with each other, and Python 2 reached its end of life in January 2020. All new projects should use Python 3.

One of Python's greatest strengths is the breadth of its ecosystem. The Python Package Index (PyPI) hosts hundreds of thousands of third-party packages covering virtually every domain. Whether you are processing data, building a web application, automating repetitive tasks or training a machine learning model, there is very likely a package that can help.

Python's emphasis on readability and simplicity makes it an excellent first programming language. At the same time, its depth and versatility mean it is equally at home in professional and research environments. It is consistently ranked among the most popular programming languages in the world.