What is Python?

Depending on how you came here, you may already have a basic understanding of what Python is as a programming language. You might have heard about it as:

• general-purpose

• object-oriented

• interpreted

• dynamically typed

• garbage collected

If you have no relation to these terms, this is not a problem at all. One of the nice things about Python is, that because of all these properties you do not need to care about it and can still use is. If you are interested in getting more informed, have a look at the “Read more” section Read more. For your first steps with Python it is not necessary, however, to get hung up with specifics.

Todo

• What is pythonic?

Philosophy

The Zen of Python

by Tim Peters

Beautiful is better than ugly.

Explicit is better than implicit.

Simple is better than complex.

Complex is better than complicated.

Flat is better than nested.

Sparse is better than dense.

Readability counts.

Special cases aren’t special enough to break the rules.

Although practicality beats purity.

Errors should never pass silently.

Unless explicitly silenced.

In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.

There should be one– and preferably only one –obvious way to do it.

Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you’re Dutch.

Now is better than never.

Although never is often better than right now.

If the implementation is hard to explain, it’s a bad idea.

If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.

Namespaces are one honking great idea – let’s do more of those!