Looking for Something Specific?

If you want to know whether a particular application, or a library with particular functionality, is available in Python there are a number of possible sources of information. The Python web site provides a Python Package Index (also known as the Cheese Shop, a reference to the Monty Python script of that name). There is also a search page for a number of sources of Python-related information. Failing that, just Google for a phrase including the word ''python'' and you may well get the result you need. If all else fails, ask on the python newsgroup and there's a good chance someone will put you on the right track.

Python is an interpreted high-level general-purpose programming language. Python's design philosophy emphasizes code readability with its notable use of significant indentation. Its language constructs as well as its object-oriented approach aim to help programmers write clear, logical code for small and large-scale projects.[30]

Python is dynamically-typed and garbage-collected. It supports multiple programming paradigms, including structured (particularly, procedural), object-oriented and functional programming. Python is often described as a "batteries included" language due to its comprehensive standard library.[31]

Guido van Rossum began working on Python in the late 1980s, as a successor to the ABC programming language, and first released it in 1991 as Python 0.9.0.[32] Python 2.0 was released in 2000 and introduced new features, such as list comprehensions and a garbage collection system using reference counting. Python 3.0 was released in 2008 and was a major revision of the language that is not completely backward-compatible and much Python 2 code does not run unmodified on Python 3. Python 2 was discontinued with version 2.7.18 in 2020.[33]

Python consistently ranks as one of the most popular programming languages.