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Python Introduction

Introduction, Features, Advantages and Disadvantages

Python Programming Language - Introduction

Python is an open source, object-oriented, high level programming language developed by Guido Van Rossum in 1990, released in 1991, at the National Research Institute for Mathematics, Neitherlands.


Presently owned by Python Software Foundation (PSF).

Python is influenced with two programming languages:

ABC language, a teaching language created to replace the programming language BASIC.

Modula-3, a language that preserving the power of a systems-programming language

Python is a general purpose programming language that can be used to build any kind of program that does not require direct access to the computer’s hardware.


Characteristics of Python


  • It supports functional and structured programming methods as well as OOP.

  • It can be used as a scripting language or can be compiled to byte-code for building large applications.

  • It provides very high-level dynamic data types and supports dynamic type checking.

  • It supports automatic garbage collection.

  • It can be easily integrated with C, C++, COM, ActiveX, CORBA, and Java.

  • It can be used to develop a large application with small codes.

Python - Advantages


It has become popular because of its salient features –

  • Easy - loosely typed OOP language with few keywords and simple English like structure, and is easy to learn

  • Takes less time to develop program, typically 3-5 times shorter than equivalent Java programs. Due to Built-in high-level data types, and dynamic typing.

  • Free and Open Source , High-Level, Portable and Object Oriented

  • Extensible & Embeddable

  • Interpreted – Python is interpreted, interactive, directly executed with pre-compiled code. This means that it is processed at runtime by the interpreter and you need not compile your program before executing it.

  • Large Standard Library and support GUI Programming (using MFC, Tkinter)

  • Python is used for both scientific and non-scientific programming.

  • Python is a case sensitive programming language.

Python – Disadvantages


It has some minus i.e. disadvantages –


  • Not the fastest Languages – Python is an interpreted language not a compiled language. It convert python source code in to the internal byte-code, which is then executed by Python interpreter. It makes slower than fully compiled languages.

  • Not strong as Type Binding – Python does not strongly bind with data types i.e. type.

  • Not easy to convert code in other languages – It is not easy to translate a Python program into other programming language because Python does not have strong syntax.

Python Introduction
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