High-level programming language
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Python is an interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language. Created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991, Python's design philosophy emphasizes code readability with its notable use of significant whitespace.Its language constructs and object-oriented approach aim to help programmers write clear, logical code for small and large-scale projects.
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Python is dynamically typed and garbage-collected. It supports multiple programming paradigms, including procedural, object-oriented, and functional programming. Python is often described as a "batteries included" language due to its comprehensive standard library.[28]
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Python was conceived in the late 1980s as a successor to the ABC language. Python 2.0, released in 2000, introduced features like list comprehensions and a garbage collection system capable of collecting reference cycles. Python 3.0, released in 2008, 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.
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The Python 2 language, i.e. Python 2.7.x, is "sunsetting" on January 1, 2020 (after extension; first planned for 2015), and the Python team of volunteers will not fix security issues, or improve it in other ways after that date.[29][30] With the end-of-life, only Python 3.5.x and later will be supported.
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Python interpreters are available for many operating systems. A global community of programmers develops and maintains CPython, an open source[31] reference implementation. A non-profit organization, the Python Software Foundation, manages and directs resources for Python and CPython development.