According to several websites, Python is one of the most trendy coding languages of 2015. Along with being a high-level and general-purpose programming language, Python is also object-oriented and open source. At the same time, a good number of developers across the world have been making use of Python to create GUI applications, websites and mobile apps. The differentiate factor that Python brings to the table is that it enables programmers to flesh out concepts by writing less and readable code. The developers can further take advantage of several Python frameworks to alleviate the time and effort required for building large and complex software applications extract human names from text.
The programming language is now being used by a number of high-traffic websites including Google, Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Maps, Linux Weekly News, Shopzilla and Web Therapy. Likewise, Python also finds great use for creating gaming, financial, scientific and educational applications. However, developers still use different versions of the programming language. According to the usage statistics and market share data of Python posted on W3techs, currently Python 2 is being used by 99.4% of websites, whereas Python 3 is being used only by 0.6% of websites. That is why, it becomes necessary for each programmer to understand different versions of Python, and its development over many years.
How Python Has Been Evolving over the Years?
Conceived as a Hobby Programming Project
Despite being one of the most popular coding languages of 2015, Python was originally conceived by Guido van Rossum as a diversion project in December 1989. As Van Rossum’s office remained closed during Christmas, he was looking for a hobby project that will keep him engaged during the holidays. He planned to create an interpreter for a new scripting language, and named the project as Python. Thus, Python was originally intended as a successor to ABC programming language. After writing the interpreter, Van Rossum made the code public in February 1991. However, at present the open source programming language is being managed by the Python Software Foundation.
Version 1 of Python
Python 1.0 was released in January 1994. The major liberate included a number of new features and functional programming tools including lambda, filter, map and reduce. The version 1.4 was released with several new facial appearance like keyword arguments, built-in support for complex numbers, and a basic form of data hiding AWS S3 upload and download file using Python The major discharge was followed by two minor releases, version 1.5 in December 1997 and version 1.6 in September 2000. The version 1 of Python lacked the features obtainable by popular programming languages of the time. But the initial versions created a solid foundation for development of a powerful and futuristic programming language.
Version 2 of Python
In October 2000, Python 2.0 was released with the new list understanding feature and a trash collection system. The syntax for the list comprehension feature was inspired by other functional programming languages like Haskell. But Python 2.0, unlike Haskell, gave preference to alphabetic keywords over punctuation characters. Also, the garbage collection system effectuated collection of reference cycles. The major release was followed by several minor releases. These releases added a number of functionality to the programming language like support for nested scopes, and unification of Python’s classes and types into a single hierarchy. The Python Software Foundation has already announced that there would be no Python 2.8. However, the Foundation will provide support to version 2.7 of the programming language till 2020.
Version 3 of Python
Python 3.0 was released in December 2008. It came with a several new features and enhancements, along with a number of deprecated features. The deprecated features and backward inappropriateness make version 3 of Python completely different from earlier versions. So many developers still use Python 2.6 or 2.7 to avail the features deprecated from last major release. However, the new features of Python 3 made it more modern and trendy. Many developers even switched to version 3.0 of the programming language to avail these overwhelming features.
Python 3.0 replaced print statement with the built-in print() function, while allowing programmers to use custom partition between lines. Likewise, it simplified the rules of ordering comparison. If the operands are not organized in a natural and meaningful order, the ordering comparison operators can now raise a TypeError exception. The version 3 of the programming language further uses text and data instead of Unicode and 8-bit strings. While treating all code as Unicode by default it represents binary data as encoded Unicode.
As Python 3 is backward incompatible, the programmers cannot access features like string exceptions, old-style classes, and implicit relative imports. Also, the developers must be familiar with changes made to sentence structure and APIs. They can use a tool called “2to3” to migrate their application from Python 2 to 3 smoothly. The tool highlights incompatibility and areas of concern through comments and warnings. The comments help programmers to make changes to the code, and upgrade their accessible applications to the latest version of programming language.