| description | The very first chapter of the python tutorial. This covers a brief introduction to the history of Python. |
|---|
Before we get into learning how to use Python, it would be insightful to know about Python itself. Why was it created and by whom? Where does Python stand today?
The Python programming language was developed back in the late 1980s by Guido van Rossum in the Netherlands. It was the successor of the ABC language which was used to teach students in universities, but it lacked extensibility from being used in real-world programming tasks, which brings us to Python.
Van Rossum was formerly the Benevolent Dictator for Life (BDFL) of Python, until he stepped down as the leader on July 12, 2018, after some controversies in the decision-making of adding the walrus operator (PEP 572) to Python.
The current governance of Python is held by a five-person committee elected by the core developers called the Python Steering Council. The Python Steering Council is re-elected after every major release (approximately 18 months). The Steering Council only controls the technical direction of the Python language.
As of August 2026, according to the TIOBE Community Index, Python is the most popular programming language in the world, used by millions of developers. Python is a versatile language used in many domains such as AI/ML, cybersecurity, web development and data science to name a few. In this tutorial, we will not be covering any of those domains, but instead we will start from the very basics to build your fundamentals and prepare you to learn them on your own.
{ width="300" }