HISTORY OF PYTHON
Python is a high-level programming language used for general purpose programming. It was created by Guido Van Rossum and first released in 1991. Guido Van Rossum is a Dutch programmer who created python and oversaw its development until July 2018. Other key developers to the program were Sjoerd Mullender and Jack Jansen.
Python is a programming language that is interpreted not compiled. It is made so that it resembles the normal English language. The philosophy behind Python’s creation is to create a language that is simple, readable, explicit. It is very easy to learn and it is used for a variety of thing. For instance, Python can be used as an extension language for applications that need a programming interface. Furthermore, python contains modules, exceptions, dynamic typing, high-level data types, and classes.
Python was first created at CWI (Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science), which is a research institute in Amsterdam. It was funded by the Dutch Department of education and by other grants. Rossum was a member of ABC group at CWI. After 5 years the ABC project was terminated and Rossum started working for the new CWI Multimedia group led by Dick Bulterman. According to Rossum, Python was a direct product of his experience at CWI. Its key inspiration was ABC and the primary motivation was Amoeba. The previous are projects Rossum worked with at CWI. Amoeba is a distributed operating system and ABC is a general-purpose programming language.
Python primary goal was to bridge the gap between C and shell. It was created to solve problems Rossum found while working on the ABC and Amoeba project. According to Rossum, there was a need for a better way to do system administration than by writing either C programs and Bourne shell scripts. Accordingly, Rossum noticed the need to have exceptions an important feature of a programing language, for this reason, Python was created. Its syntax was influenced by other languages like Algol 60, Pascal, Algol 68 and ABC. Furthermore, the syntax and semantics for the exceptions module in Python was based on Modula-3. Moreover, today Python is a general-purpose programming language used to solve many types of problems.
After choosing a name for the new language after a TV Show called Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Rossum started to develop the language in 1989. In 1990 Russom made Python available within CWI and it was mostly used by the Amoeba group. The first version of python released to the public on February 20, 1991 was labeled as 0.9.0 . The medium used for its release was the alt.sources newsgroup – a repository for source-code of any kind for the purpose of distribution and sharing. Additionally, Python was open source. In 1993 the first python newsgroup was created ( comp.lang.python) and with the growing popularity of the language through this newsgroup, Rossum was invited to be a guest researcher at NIST, The US National Institute for Standards and Technology. Consequently, in November of 1994 the first Python workshop was held.
Currently, the last release of Python is Python 3.7.1 and it still is an open source programming language. Regarding the number of versions released there are many. Amongst them the major releases are the following:
- Python 1.0 - January 1994;
- Python 1.5 - December 31, 1997;
- Python 1.6 - September 5, 2000;
- Python 2.0 - October 16, 2000;
- Python 2.1 - April 17, 2001;
- Python 2.2 - December 21, 2001;
- Python 2.3 - July 29, 2003;
- Python 2.4 - November 30, 2004;
- Python 2.5 - September 19, 2006;
- Python 2.6 - October 1, 2008;
- Python 2.7 - July 3, 2010;
- Python 3.0 - December 3, 2008;
- Python 3.1 - June 27, 2009;
- Python 3.2 - February 20, 2011;
- Python 3.3 - September 29, 2012;
- Python 3.4 - March 16, 2014;
- Python 3.5 - September 13, 2015;
- Python 3.6 - December 23, 2016 ;
- Python 3.7 - June 27, 2018 .
Major releases are currently 18 months apart and the recommended release for users is currently Python 3.X .
Currently python is used to solve a variety of problems. It includes the following functionalities: string processing, Internet protocols, software engineering and operating system interfaces. Some important projects developed with Python include the following:
- Carmanah Technologies Inc. That consists of a self-contained, autonomous marine navigation light;
- DSL Firmware Recovery System developed by Mr.Wong;
- ProjectPipe developed by Botonomy LLC;
- Test&Go uses Python for Data Validation
- WordStream that consists of 25,000 lines of python – used for keyword research and suggestions.
Being an open-source programming language, free to download by all, the statistics on how many people use Python does not reveal the real number of users. The guess is that tens of thousands of people and more use Python today for many projects. Amongst the users, many beginning programmers are learning how to program using Python, a very clear and simple programming language that resembles the English language.
Regarding Python’s copyright, the Python Software Foundation holds the copyright for every Python version starting from 2.1. Python Software Foundation is the organization with the following mission: “ promote, protect, and advance the Python programming language, and to support and facilitate the growth of a diverse and international community of Python programmer (Python Software Foundation)”. Python Software Foundation overall duties, include but are not limited to management and solicitation of Python codebase contributions, raising funds to support programs and services, production of core Python distributions, encouragement and facilitation of Python-research by the public.
To conclude, Python exists for 28 years (older than google). It was created by Guido Van Rossum while working at CWI. As a direct product of Rossum experience with ABC and Amoeba projects, Python was created with the main goal of solving a problem with the development of system administration in C - and because of a need of higher-level language in the Amoeba project. Today python is generally defined as an interpreted, object-oriented, high-level programming language with dynamic semantics – used to solve problems in a variety of areas. It is currently very stable with new major releases every 6 to 18 months since it was first launched. Finally, being an open-source language, the Python community largely influences Python development – major new features are proposed and approved by Python community through PEP (Python Enhancement Proposal) and Guido Van Rossum, known as the Benevolent Dictator for Life for Python until July 2018.
Bibliography
Rossum, Guido van. “Personal History - Part 1, CWI.” Www.python-history.blogspot.com, 20 Jan. 2009, python-history.blogspot.com/2009/01/brief-timeline-of-python.html.
Wolf, John. “A Brief History of Python.” Www.medium.com, 4 Mar. 2018, medium.com/@johnwolfe820/a-brief-history-of-python-ca2fa1f2e99e.
“General Python FAQ¶.” 16.2. Threading - Higher-Level Threading Interface - Python 2.7.15 Documentation, 2018, docs.python.org/3/faq/general.html#general-information.
“Python Success Stories.” Python.org, 2018, www.python.org/about/success/.
Eamme, Vinay Kumar. “How Many Versions of Python Are There?” Www.quora.com, 2016, www.quora.com/How-many-versions-of-Python-are-ther
Fairchild, Carlie. “Guido Van Rossum Stepping Down from Role as Python's Benevolent Dictator For Life.” Www.linuxjournal.com, 12 July 2018, doi:10.3897/bdj.2.e1061.figure2f.
Amazing content. Helped me a lot with my essay.
ReplyDelete