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Python History

PythonLearn basics of Python



Introduction To Python Programming Language

Python is an object-oriented programming language and high-level interpreted language. It is well-known for its readability. With Python, the coder can write a complex program in a succinct way with fewer lines of code. Other popular programming languages such as Java or C++ lacks the concise approach, and the programmer needs to write long programs to do trivial things. Key features of Python programming language includes support for functional programming, imperative and object oriented. It is free to use and available under the open source license.

Python History

In the late 1980s, first Python code started to surface, but it’s truly started implemented in December 1989 by the legendary programmer, Guido van Rossum at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica(CWI). He wanted to create a success of ABC language which was capable of working with the OS Amoeba and also capable of exception handling. A major release of Python includes the 2.0, and 3.0 releases. Python 2.0 released on 16th October 2000 whereas Python 3.0 was first released on 3rd December 2008. The current stable release on 17th September 2016 is Python 3.5.2. Also, the Python name was chosen by Rossum because of his love for the show, "Monty Python’s Flying Circus."

Python Tools

Python tools can help you bring the best out of your Python knowledge. These tools are made for both developers and data scientists. Most of the tools automate the boring tasks and help you stay on top of your game. Check out the best Python tools below.

  • IPython: IPython offers a command shell for Python. It also works for other programming languages. IPython offers features such as additional shell syntax, rich media, enhanced introspection, and much more.
  • Beautiful Soup: A simple Python library that aims to provide a way for processing XML, HTML and other structure data.
  • GraphLab Create: GraphLab Create helps you build high-performance, large-scale data products and is completely coded in Python.
  • Pandas: Pandas is a data analysis and data structure for Python programming language. It is completely open source and is currently licensed as a BSD-licensed library.
  • PuLP With PuLP, you can be used to optimize objective functions. It is written completely in Python and generate LP files. Furthermore, it provides highly optimized solutions such as CPLEX, COIN CLP/CBC, GLPK, etc.
  • Scrapy: Screen scraping and web crawling can easily be done with this amazing python tool.
  • Matplotlib Matplotlib is a popular 2D plotting library for Python. It is used in many environments including MATLAB, Python scripting, etc.
  • Scikit-Learn Are you looking for a simple, efficient tool for your data analysis and data mining needs? If so, Scikit-learn is for you. It is open source and can be used in different context, i.e., according to the problem. It is available under the BSD license.
  • Spark: Spark is a popular tool for executing various cluster oriented parallel operations. Spark achieves parallel distributing using its resilient distributed dataset (RDD). It is a collection of elements across the cluster nodes, partitioned, and can be operated in parallel mode.
  • Pillow Pillow is a popular Python library that is used for image processing. It is open source.

Python Best Books

Python books are the source of knowledge for Python programmers. It doesn’t matter if you are learning Python language or working on practical Python projects, the books can easily help you attain the most out of your work and learning. Also, if you find yourself asking questions similar to “How to use Python to build different type of applications?”, then you just need to read books that tackle the question yourself. For you, we have done the hard work. Check out the books mentioned below. They are divided into beginners, intermediate, and advanced programmer. So choose one that fits you better.

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    Django Design Patterns and Best Practices

    by Arun Ravindran

    If you want to learn how best to utilize commonly found patterns and learn best practices in developing applications with Django, this is the book for you. This book, like Django itself, is accessible to amateur and professional developers alike and assumes little in the way of prior experience. Although written for Python 3, the majority of the code in this book.

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    Effective Python: 59 Specific Ways to Write Better Python

    by Brett Slatkin

    “Each item in Slatkin’s Effective Python teaches a self-contained lesson with its own source code. This makes the book random-access: Items are easy to browse and study in whatever order the reader needs. I will be recommending Effective Python to students as an admirably compact source of mainstream advice on a very broad range of topics for the intermediate Python programmer.”

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    Treading on Python Volume 2: Intermediate Python

    by Matt Harrison

    Python is easy to learn. You can learn the basics in a day and be productive with it. But there are more advanced constructs that you will eventually run across if you spend enough time with it. These constructs, while not necessary per se, allow you to be more succinct,re-use code, and think about code in a different way.

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    Fluent Python

    by Luciano Ramalho


  • Book cover

    Python Cookbook

    by David Beazley, Brian K. Jones


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    High Performance Python: Practical Performant Programming for Humans

    by Micha Gorelick, Ian Ozsvald

    Your Python code may run correctly, but you need it to run faster. By exploring the fundamental theory behind design choices, this practical guide helps you gain a deeper understanding of Python’s implementation. You’ll learn how to locate performance bottlenecks and significantly speed up your code in high-data-volume programs.

Python Projects

Django is a high-level Python framework suited for web development. It helps web developers to quickly develop and deploy web application resulting in clean, pragmatic and rapid development.

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Scrapy is a powerful web crawler library for Python. It offers fast scraping using pre-defined function and is also easy to use.

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Want to work with Python HTTP requests? Then, you can use “Requests” a proper HTTP library to be used with Python.

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HTTPie is a simple HTTP client that comes with a command line. It also offers a cURL replacement which is user-friendly in nature.

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Flask’s microframework architecture enables developers to work with minimal modules and add them when required.

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Tornado is created at FriendFeed to provide a mix of web framework and asynchronous networking library. It excels at accepting hundreds of open connections, and that’s why it is great for creating network related web projects including WebSockets, long polling, etc.

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Ansible is an automation tool that lets you deploy your systems and application easily. It simplifies your automation process and amplifies your work to the next level. It uses SSH for secure installation on remote systems.

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It is always a good idea to follow a Python guide. The Python guide enables you to follow the best practices and make fewer errors.

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Sentry is a server that enables error logging and aggregation easy for the developer. It works great for Python, but can also be used with other programming language, thanks to the full-scale API.

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Want to try out code-completion for Vim? Check out YouCompleteMe, a code-completion engine for Vim. It uses fuzzy-search for code completion purposes and comes with tons of features.

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Python Community

Python’s community is rich because to its open source nature. Great people work on Python language all the time, making it more refined and ensuring that new features are added to make it sustainable in the market. The community is also helpful and helps everyone including experts, beginners and anyone who is willing to learn.

Freenode IRC network offers many Python-related channels. You can find it on IRC server Freenode. You can also connect directly by going to

Python Gurus

  • Damien George

    Damien George

    Damien George is well known for his contribution to Python. His main work surrounds MicroPython board and optimizations to CPython’s speed. He also helps the community and is active in many communities including micro: bit/MicroPython.

    Damien George Blog
  • Jacqueline Kazil

    Jacqueline Kazil is a well known Python entity Data Wrangling with Python.She has also worked extensively in PyCon’s PyLadies Auction and help girl coders in the industry.

    Jacqueline Kazil Twitter
    Jacqueline Kazil
  • Mark Hammond

    Mark Hammond

    Mark Hammond is well known for its work on the pywin32 package. It was created and maintained by him all these years. The package helps Windows platform to take advantage of Python. With this, lower-level Win32 APIs can be accessed easily. He got tons of awards in his lifetime including from Python community.

    Mark Hammond Website
  • Guido van Rossum

    Guido van Rossum is the designer of Python programming language. He is well known for his contribution to the development community. He worked with big companies such as Google and Dropbox and also helped to create the technology of the future.

    Guido van Rossum Website
    Guido van Rossum
  • Barry Warsaw

    Barry Warsaw

    Barry Warsaw, a Python developer, worked on multiple Python projects including the most popular Mailman list manager. The Mailman is written completely in Python and has been used in email standard library module. With an aim to improve Python community, he wants developers to adopt Python 3 and also helped in the development of Ubuntu Linux.

    Barry Warsaw Website

Python Conferences

There are many Python conferences around the globe. Check some of the important ones listed below.