History of Python

Guido Van Rossum is a Dutch programmer who created the Python programming language. In the late 1980s, he worked at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), a computer science research institute in the Netherlands, developing the ABC programming language. In 1991, Van Rossum conceived and released Python as the successor to ABC.

For many outsiders, the word Python is associated with a breed of snake. However, Rossum credits the popular BBC comedy series “Monty’s Flying Circus” for choosing the name Python.

As Python’s principal architect, the developer community awarded him the title of “Benevolent Dictator for Life” (BDFL). However, in 2018, Rossum relinquished this title. Since then, the development and distribution of the Python reference implementation has been the responsibility of the non-profit organization Python Software Foundation.

Important Milestones in Python’s History

Python 0.9.0

Python’s first release, version 0.9.0, was released in February 1991. It included support for core object-oriented programming principles.

Python 1.0

Version 1.0 was released in January 1994 and included functional programming tools, support for complex numbers, and other features.

Python 2.0

The next major version, Python 2.0, was released in October 2000. It included many new features, such as list comprehensions, garbage collection, and Unicode support.

Python 3.0

Python 3.0 was a complete rewrite of Python, released in December 2008. The primary goal of this rewrite was to eliminate many inconsistencies that had emerged in the Python 2.x versions. Python 3 was reworked into Python 2.6. It also included a utility called python2to3 to automatically convert Python 2 code to Python 3.

End of Life for Python 2.x

Even after the release of Python 3, the Python Software Foundation continued to support the Python 2 branch, releasing incremental micro-versions until 2019. However, it decided to end support for that version at the end of 2020, with Python 2.7.17 being the last release in that branch.

Current Versions

Meanwhile, more and more features have been merged into the Python 3.x branch. As of now, Python 3.11.2 is the current stable version, scheduled for release in February 2023.

New Features in Python 3.11

One of the most significant features of Python 3.11 is its significant speed improvement. According to the official Python documentation, this version is up to 60% faster than the previous version (3.10). The documentation also states that standard benchmark suites show 25% faster execution.

• Python 3.11 has improved exception message functionality. Instead of generating lengthy tracebacks when exceptions occur, it now directly provides the exact expression that caused the error.

• As recommended by PEP 678, the add_note() method has been added to the BaseException class. You can call this method in an except clause and pass a custom error message.

• It also adds the cbroot() function to the maths module. This function returns the cube root of a given number.

• A new module, tomllib, has been added to the standard library. TOML (Tom’s manifestly minimal language) can be parsed using the tomllib module functions.