Python Overview

Python is a general purpose programming language created in the late 1980s, and named after …… Monty Python! Yes, really. It is used by thousands of people to do things from testing microchips at Intel, to powering Instagram, to building video games with the PyGame library. Its small size, resemblance to the English language, and hundreds of existing third-party libraries consistently help it remain as one of the most popular programming languages.

Python lets you work more quickly than many other programming languages. Experienced programmers in any other language can pick up Python very quickly, and beginners find the clean syntax and indentation structure easy to learn. And fun fact - the social news networking site, Reddit, is written entirely in Python.

Why Use Python?

Readability

Python very closely resembles the English language, using words like ‘not’ and ‘in’ to make it to where you can very often read a program, or script, aloud to someone else and not feel like you’re speaking some arcane language. This is also helped by Python’s very strict punctuation rules which means you don’t have curly braces ({ }) all over your code.

Also, Python has a set of rules, known as PEP 8, that tell every Python developer how to format their code. This means you always know where to put new lines and, more importantly, that pretty much every other Python script you pick up, whether it was written by a novice or a seasoned professional, will look very similar and be just as easy to read.

Libraries

Python has been around for over 20 years, so a lot of code written in Python has built up over the decades and, being an open source language, a lot of this has been released for others to use.

Community

Python has user groups everywhere, usually called PUGs, and does major conferences on every continent other than Antarctica. The strong community helps keep Python programmers engaged with the language.

Get Started with Python

As you can see, Python is a popular language that is easy to learn and has many great uses. Parliament Tutors can help you quickly get started on your path to becoming a Python programmer today!