History of Python: Many Versions of a Unique Language
Python ranks third in the world among the most used programming languages. But how did it achieve this position? To answer this question, we will examine the entire history of Python. From its first version, released in the late 1980s, to the latest one released this year.
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Creator of Python: Meet Guido van Rossum
Guido van Rossum is the original creator of the Python language and therefore the person responsible for its existence. An information technology specialist born in the Netherlands, he was responsible for Python development, conceiving and defining all possible development paths for this popular programming language.
Why the name Python? The name of this programming language was given in honor of Monty Python, the famous British comedy troupe.
During the Christmas holidays of 1989, while van Rossum was working at the Dutch research center (CWI), he decided to start a new project as a personal pastime. He planned to perfect the ABC programming language, which had been developed at the same center where he worked.
ABC was developed in the early 1980s as an alternative to BASIC. Because of its ease of learning and use, this language was intended for beginner programmers. Its code was compatible, but readable.
However, due to the hardware limitations existing at that time, the project could not develop beyond a certain point, so van Rossum decided to give his idea a second life and, taking his own starting point, began work on Python.
History of Python: A Look at All Its Versions
The history of Python begins with Guido van Rossum in 1989, when he started developing the language. By February 1991, the first implementation was complete and the first public version - 0.9.0 - appeared.
Version 1.0 was published in January 1994, version 2.0 in October 2000, and version 3.0 in December 2008.
Already in the first version, classes with inheritance, exception handling, functions, and one of Python’s main features—modular operation—appeared. This made the program much more accessible and cleaner even for those with basic programming knowledge. This feature has remained to this day.
Until 2018, van Rossum personally led the development of this popular programming language. In 2019, he decided to step down, and since then five people have been responsible for the language's development. This council is renewed annually.
When the first final version of Python was released, the popularity of the new programming language was such that a special discussion forum, comp.lang.python, was created, further increasing the number of users.
Version 1.0
Python is a programming language that van Rossum began developing while working at CWI. It was this research center that made version 1.2 free in 1995. From that point on, no longer affiliated with CWI, van Rossum began making the code more accessible. By 2000, the core development team moved to BeOpen.com to give birth to the BeOpen Python Labs team.
Python 1.6.1 fully mirrors version 1.6, with the exception of some fixed bugs and a new license suitable for GPL.
Python version 1.6 had some licensing issues until the Free Software Foundation (FSF) managed to convert Python to a Free Software license, making it compatible with the GPL.
Version 2.0
In October 2000, the second version of Python was published. The new version implemented list comprehensions—one of the most important features of this programming language.
In 2001, the Python Software Foundation was created, which, since Python 2.1, is the copyright holder of all code, documentation, and language specifications.
Building on this new feature, the new version of Python introduced a new system that allowed programmers to create cyclic references, thus enabling Python to perform garbage collection within the code.
Version 3.0
The last major update in the history of Python releases occurred in 2008 with the release of version 3.0, which was intended to address the main design flaws of this programming language.
Although in the latest version Python retained its previous philosophy, as a programming language it had accumulated new and redundant ways to program the same element. This leads to the need to create new versions that eliminate duplication of constructs.
Python 3.0 breaks backward compatibility of the language, since Python 2.x code does not necessarily work in Python 3.0 without modifications.