Introduction
Python is an open source, cross platform, interpreted language. Cross platform means that a program written on any platform is guaranteed to run across any platform which Python supports. It is a powerful language because there are many third party packages available. The official repository of those packages is http://pypi.python.org. Python comes with a tool called pip which allows downloading libraries from the official repository.
Python is widely used across major domains. YouTube, Quora, Hulu, Dropbox are just a few platforms written in Python. We can write command line applications, bootloaders, Robots, Machine Learning algorithms, automate test cases, system administration automation etc using Python.
There are few things which make Python an awesome language:
English like syntax: It takes very little time to learn the language and write code. This makes it an excellent prototyping language.
Less number of lines: Programs implemented in Python have significantly less number of lines as compared to other languages.
High level data structures: Hashmaps, sets, lists make it really easy to write complex programs with comparatively less effort..
Drawbacks:
- Speed: Since it is an interpreted language, it is slower than most languages.
- Debugging: Being a dynamically typed language, it is somewhat difficult to debug the programs.
Python 2 vs Python3
Python3 is the successor of Python2. In 2020 Python2 will be history. This tutorial is based on Python3 as it is the present and future of the language. Python3 is a backwards incompatible with Python2, which means, code written for Python2 is not guaranteed to run on Python3. There is a way of writing code which runs both on Python 2 and 3, but it is beyond the scope of this guide.
Installation
- Windows: Download the latest .exe file of Python3 from https://python.org and click on Next Next.
- Android: Install Termux (https://termux.com/help.html), and then
apt-get install python3.. - Linux: sudo apt-get install python3 / sudo yum install python3 / use other package manager
- Mac: brew install python3.
- iOS: python 3 for ios (not free).
Links
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