Research Paper - The Part That Is Actually About Python

Python (the programming language)

Python is a relatively longstanding addition to the family of computer programming languages, having been established in 1990 and having been constantly used and modified since then. (Seventeen years is a relatively long time in an industry that has truly existed for only a few decades.)

Python is notable for being fairly easy to learn for both new programmers and people experienced at programming in other languages, as well as being quite powerful and capable to use. It is also suited to a variety of uses. (Often, programming languages fulfill a few of these requirements well, but not the others.) Python is also notable for being available on a very wide variety of operating systems. Enthused users of the language refer to it as having “batteries included”, meaning that several various useful ‘module’ programs are included with the Python install, as a standard library. Python engages in automatic computer-memory management, taking an oft-annoying hassle out of the programming process. Some sections of code written in C or C++ can be integrated into Python when necessary. Finally, Python rejects what are known as more “arcane” language features, and thus is more intuitive, this being an important part of its ease-of-use.

Python was created chiefly by Guido van Rossum while working at CWI in the Netherlands. (CWI is short for Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, the Dutch for National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science.) Van Rossum has been heavily involved with the language to this day, and is known informally as the project’s “Benevolent Dictator for Life”, a term abbreviated as ‘BDFL’.

Van Rossum named the language not for the constrictor snake, but for the British comedy troupe. Monty Python references do show up in the language’s user community, and one of the most notable such references is how the “development environment” (an application in which programmers write code) that comes with the Python download is called IDLE, ostensibly standing for Integrated DeveLopment Environment, but is more clearly Eric Idle’s last name. [ In this vein, there is a programming repository on the Python website called ‘Python Cheese Shop’, http://cheeseshop.python.org/. For the benefit of those who do not get the reference, ‘Cheese Shop’ was one of the classic Monty Python routines.]

Python was originally developed a scripting language for Amoeba, an old operating system that was another CWI project. (Scripting lanaguages are designed for end-users to easily code “extensions” to existing programs or operating systems.) Python is an example of a relatively common process, that of a scripting language expanding to a general-use programming language.

In an interview with Bill Venners published at http://www.artima.com/intv/python.html, van Rossum discusses the genesis of the language. In short, he explains how he was deeply influenced by his work on the Amoeba OS, and the ‘ABC’ programming language, and how much of Pythons was development was inspired by the good and bad of those two predecessors.

The last version of the language released from CWI was Python 1.2. However, in 1995, van Rossum continued working on Python from the Corporation for National Research Initiatives in Reston, VA. The last version released there was Python 1.6. As it stands today, however, Python is administered by a nonprofit organization called the ‘Python Software Foundation’. The PSF manages Python, develops it, develops its user community, organizes conferences such as PyCon, and raises funds. Python’s license, now called the Python Software Foundation License, is completely-open source. Among some other things, it means that Python is completely free to install and use, even when the programs are for commercial uses. (Some notable entities that use Python heavily on a regular basis are NASA and Google, amongst others.)

The major “implementation” of Python is CPython. (“Implementation” is an engineering and computer-science term for a practical application of another topic.) This is written in C, and is called Classic Python. It is a “bytecode interpreter”, this meaning that it converts source code, the human-readable form that programmers type, into machine code that a computer can run. Jython, written in Java, is the other major implementation.