Some history#
Python was created by Guido van Rossum in the early 1990s as a programming language to support in teaching with simplicity and readability in mind.
Many programming languages, such as C and C++ developed towards being powerful and performance, whilst more simple programming languages such as BASIC lacked modern programming features, such as object orientation for example.
Fig. 1 Guido van Rossum (Courtesy unknown)#
So Guido deciced for a number of features that a programming language, suitable for teaching algorithms and programming concepts, should provide.
The language he had in mind should be:
simple
easy to read and understand
come with batteries included
typeless
offer an object orientated design
These properties had consequences for the Programming language later becoming known as Python.
Note
The name for the programming language was derived by Monty Python, not the snake. However in contrast to the name finding, the python is now the logo of the language.
Guido decided against a compiler for the language. As it was mainly created for teaching purposes, maximum performance was not really a desire, so an interpreter would be just fine to run the programs. Python is object orientated right from the start. Actually everything is an object in Python. Pretty comparable to the design of Java for example. Being a typeless language allows for variables to change their types on demand whilst running a program. Furthermore no variables need to be declared before using them.
Readability is one of the most important concepts in Python. Therefore Guido decided to create code blocks using indents instead of begin and end statements for example or braces, which are used in most other languages.
Note
The concept to use curly braces to define code blocks, which is common in C like languages and Java for example, mainly originates from typesetting costs for books. By using braces, source code can be printed in a very dense manner, which saves quite a lot of space and therefore reduces the number of pages in a book. As a consequence the book would become cheaper in production, which was quite important back in the time where Python was created.
We will see the concept of code blocks later on. But now, without further ado, let’s dive into this wonderful programming language.