Welcome to Python

Though Python doesnt need any introdcution anymore, lets dig into some history about this awesome language. Python is a widely used high-level programming language for general-purpose programming, created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991. Python has a design philosophy which emphasizes code readability and a syntax which allows programmers to express concepts in fewer lines of code than possible in languages such as C++ or Java. In summary,

• Open source general-purpose language.
• Object Oriented, Procedural, Functional
• Easy to interface with C/ObjC/Java/Fortran
• Easy-ish to interface with C++ (via SWIG)
• Great interactive environment

To Download: http://www.python.org Documentation: http://www.python.org/doc/

There's a huge consideration and choice difference between the two main version of python. To see the clear view take a look here https://wiki.python.org/moin/Python2orPython3 In short, • “Current” version is 2.7.x • “Mainstream” version is 2.5.x • The new kid on the block is 3.x

You probably want 2.5x, 2.7x unless you are starting from scratch. Then maybe 3.x will be the better choice.

Good news for the Ruby developer that the Python syntax is quite similar with Ruby. For Java and C++ developer at first it may seems a little different and hard to read. But give it a little try and you'll see the beauty of it and why it became so popular in no time.

 x = 34 - 23 # A comment.
 y = “Hello” 
 z = 3.45
if z == 3.45 or y == “Hello”:
     x = x + 1
     y = y + “ World” # String concat.
print x
print y

Any big top tier company uses python where its needed. In most companies python is used for fast prototyping.

• Google (Youtube)
• Facebook (Tornado)
• Dropbox
• Yahoo
• NASA
• IBM
• Mozilla
• Quora