What, Where, and Who of python

Python was developed and improved on primarily by Guido van Rossum , who named it after Monty Python's Flying Circus. Initially Python was part of the Amoeba Project at CWI in the Nether lands . Guido released Python via Internet FTP distribution and continues to develop and improve the language to the gratification of an ever increasing audience of programmers and users.

The Python language descends from the Modula family of languages, except that it uses Lisp-like dynamic typing and borrows other features from other languages such as object orientation ala Smalltalk, functional programming extensions from FP, and conveniences from UNIX shell languages. One of the novel things about Python is that it doesn't contain anything new--every piece of Python descends from some feature of some other language that has been proven valuable over the years--but it offers all these useful features in a clean, simple, well-designed package, written in portable C.

The copyright permits nearly arbitrary use of the language and its source code, even for general commercial purposes: the only thing you can't do with Python is copyright it yourself or sue the authors for any proble ms with the package or its documentation. This flexibility makes Python amenable for use and modification as a component in commercial products. In particular, the Python copyright lacks the various commercial usage restrictions present in the GNU public license, for example. So, if you want to feather Python into your commercial product, with everything compiled (even the Python source, and with all Python-code modules byte compiled), and charge mucho dinero for it all, there's no problem.

Python is ideal for rapid prototyping and development using the ``scripting/extension'' model. In this approach basic external access primitives and computationally intensive operations may be implemented as compiled extensions to Python, and high-level control can be implemented using Python scripts, to produce flexible, extensible, scriptable, rapidly developed software components that can be easily maintained and modified.