[37] Python consistently ranks as one of the most popular programming languages, and has gained widespread use in the machine learning community.

[38][39][40][41] Python was conceived in the late 1980s[42] by Guido van Rossum at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in the Netherlands as a successor to the ABC programming language, which was inspired by SETL,[43] capable of exception handling and interfacing with the Amoeba operating system.

[44] Van Rossum shouldered sole responsibility for the project, as the lead developer, until 12 July 2018, when he announced his "permanent vacation" from his responsibilities as Python's "benevolent dictator for life" (BDFL), a title the Python community bestowed upon him to reflect his long-term commitment as the project's chief decision-maker[45] (he has since come out of retirement and is self-titled "BDFL-emeritus").

In January 2019, active Python core developers elected a five-member Steering Council to lead the project.

[48] Python 2.0 was released on 16 October 2000, with many major new features such as list comprehensions, cycle-detecting garbage collection, reference counting, and Unicode support.

Notable changes in 3.11 from 3.10 include increased program execution speed and improved error reporting.

Python 3.13 introduces more syntax for types, a new and improved interactive interpreter (REPL), featuring multi-line editing and color support; an incremental garbage collector (producing shorter pauses for collection in programs with a lot of objects, and addition to the improved speed in 3.11 and 3.12), and an experimental just-in-time (JIT) compiler (such features, can/needs to be enabled specifically for the increase in speed),[63] and an experimental free-threaded build mode, which disables the global interpreter lock (GIL), allowing threads to run more concurrently, that latter feature enabled with python3.13t or python3.13t.exe.

Python 3.13 introduces some change in behavior, i.e. new "well-defined semantics", fixing bugs (plus many removals of deprecated classes, functions and methods, and removed some of the C API and outdated modules): "The [old] implementation of locals() and frame.f_locals is slow, inconsistent and buggy [and it] has many corner cases and oddities.

UTF-8 is already used, by default, on Windows (and elsewhere), for most things, but e.g. to open files it's not and enabling also makes code fully cross-platform, i.e. use UTF-8 for everything on all platforms.

Python uses dynamic typing and a combination of reference counting and a cycle-detecting garbage collector for memory management.

Van Rossum's vision of a small core language with a large standard library and easily extensible interpreter stemmed from his frustrations with ABC, which espoused the opposite approach.

[42] Python claims to strive for a simpler, less-cluttered syntax and grammar while giving developers a choice in their coding methodology.

"[86] Python's developers usually strive to avoid premature optimization and reject patches to non-critical parts of the CPython reference implementation that would offer marginal increases in speed at the cost of clarity.

[87] Execution speed can be improved by moving speed-critical functions to extension modules written in languages such as C, or by using a just-in-time compiler like PyPy.

This is reflected in its name—a tribute to the British comedy group Monty Python[89]—and in occasionally playful approaches to tutorials and reference materials, such as the use of the terms "spam" and "eggs" (a reference to a Monty Python sketch) in examples, instead of the often-used "foo" and "bar".

Python methods have an explicit self parameter to access instance data, in contrast to the implicit self (or this) in some other object-oriented programming languages (e.g., C++, Java, Objective-C, Ruby).

[111] Python also provides methods, often called dunder methods (due to their names beginning and ending with double-underscores), to allow user-defined classes to modify how they are handled by native operations including length, comparison, in arithmetic operations and type conversion.

[125] Python allows Boolean expressions with multiple equality relations in a manner that is consistent with general use in mathematics.

It includes modules for creating graphical user interfaces, connecting to relational databases, generating pseudorandom numbers, arithmetic with arbitrary-precision decimals,[128] manipulating regular expressions, and unit testing.

Some parts of the standard library are covered by specifications—for example, the Web Server Gateway Interface (WSGI) implementation wsgiref follows PEP 333[133]—but most are specified by their code, internal documentation, and test suites.

Other shells, including IDLE and IPython, add further abilities such as improved auto-completion, session state retention, and syntax highlighting.

[178] Development originally took place on a self-hosted source-code repository running Mercurial, until Python moved to GitHub in January 2017.

Parts of the typing module are deprecated, e.g. creating a typing.NamedTuple class using keyword arguments to denote the fields and such (and more) will be disallowed in Python 3.15.

Tools that can generate documentation for Python API include pydoc (available as part of the standard library), Sphinx, Pdoc and its forks, Doxygen and Graphviz, among others.

Large organizations that use Python include Wikipedia, Google,[196] Yahoo!,[197] CERN,[198] NASA,[199] Facebook,[200] Amazon, Instagram,[201] Spotify,[202] and some smaller entities like Industrial Light & Magic[203] and ITA.

Web frameworks like Django, Pylons, Pyramid, TurboGears, web2py, Tornado, Flask, Bottle, and Zope support developers in the design and maintenance of complex applications.

The Janus system, in particular, exploits the similarities between these two languages, in part because of their use of dynamic typing, and the simple recursive nature of their data structures.

Typical applications of this combination include natural language processing, visual query answering, geospatial reasoning, and handling of semantic web data.

[222][223] Python has been successfully embedded in many software products as a scripting language, including in finite element method software such as Abaqus, 3D parametric modelers like FreeCAD, 3D animation packages such as 3ds Max, Blender, Cinema 4D, Lightwave, Houdini, Maya, modo, MotionBuilder, Softimage, the visual effects compositor Nuke, 2D imaging programs like GIMP,[224] Inkscape, Scribus and Paint Shop Pro,[225] and musical notation programs like scorewriter and capella.

For example, the practice of requiring a document describing the rationale for, and issues surrounding, a change to the language (in Python, a PEP) is also used in Tcl,[247] Erlang,[248] and Swift.