Python introduction

 

These modules enable programmers to add to or customize their tools to be more efficient.

Databases − Python provides interfaces to all major commercial databases.

GUI Programming − Python supports GUI applications that can be created and ported to many system calls, libraries and windows systems, such as Windows MF Macintosh, and the X Window system of Unix.

Scalable − Python provides a better structure and support for large programs than shell scripting.

Audience
This Python tutorial is designed for software programmers who need to learn Python programming language from scratch.

Prerequisites
You should have a basic understanding of Computer Programming terminologies. Python is a general-purpose interpreted, interactive, object-oriented, and high-level programming language. It was created by Guido van Rossum during 1985- 1990. Python is designed to be highly readable. I'm going to list few of them here:

Easy-to-learn − Python has few keywords, simple structure, and a clearly defined syntax. I will list down some of the key advantages of learning Python:

Python is Interpreted − Python is processed at runtime by the interpreter. This allows the student to pick up the language quickly.

Easy-to-read − Python code is more clearly defined and visible to the eyes.

Easy-to-maintain − Python's source code is fairly easy-to-maintain.

A broad standard library − Python's bulk of the library is very portable and cross-platform compatible on UNIX, Windows, and Macintosh.

Interactive Mode − Python has support for an interactive mode which allows interactive testing and debugging of snippets of code.

Portable − Python can run on a wide variety of hardware platforms and has the same interface on all platforms.

Extendable − You can add low-level modules to the Python interpreter. Like Perl, Python source code is also available under the GNU General Public License (GPL). A basic understanding of any of the programming languages is a plus. This is similar to PERL and PHP.

Python is Interactive − You can actually sit at a Python prompt and interact with the interpreter directly to write your programs.

Python is Object-Oriented − Python supports Object-Oriented style or technique of programming that encapsulates code within objects.

Python is a Beginner's Language − Python is a great language for the beginner-level programmers and supports the development of a wide range of applications from simple text processing to WWW browsers to games.

Characteristics of Python
Following are important characteristics of Python Programming −

It supports functional and structured programming methods as well as OOP.

It can be used as a scripting language or can be compiled to byte-code for building large applications.

It provides very high-level dynamic data types and supports dynamic type checking.

It supports automatic garbage collection.

It can be easily integrated with C, C++, COM, ActiveX, CORBA, and Java.

Hello World using Python.
Just to give you a little excitement about Python, I'm going to give you a small conventional Python Hello World program, You can try it using Demo link.

Live Demo
print ("Hello, Python!");
Applications of Python
As mentioned before, Python is one of the most widely used language over the web. This tutorial gives enough understanding on Python programming language.

Why to Learn Python?
Python is a high-level, interpreted, interactive and object-oriented scripting language. It uses English keywords frequently where as other languages use punctuation, and it has fewer syntactical constructions than other languages.

Python is a MUST for students and working professionals to become a great Software Engineer specially when they are working in Web Development Domain. You do not need to compile your program before executing it."
Fortunately an experienced programmer in any programming language (whatever it may be) can pick up Python very quickly. If you are looking for common Python recipes and patterns, you can browse the Active State Python Cookbook

Looking for Something Specific?
If you want to know whether a particular application, or a library with particular functionality, is available in Python there are a number of possible sources of information. There is also a list of resources in other languages which might be useful if English is not your first language.

The online documentation is your first port of call for definitive information. Python For Beginners
Welcome! Are you completely new to programming? If not then we presume you will be looking for information about why and how to get started with Python. There is a fairly brief tutorial that gives you basic information about the language and gets you started. Even some Windows computers (notably those from HP) now come with Python already installed. If all else fails, ask on the python newsgroup and there's a good chance someone will put you on the right track.

Frequently Asked Questions
If you have a question, it's a good idea to try the FAQ, which answers the most commonly asked questions about Python. There is also a search page for a number of sources of Python-related information. You can follow this by looking at the library reference for a full description of Python's many libraries and the language reference for a complete (though somewhat dry) explanation of Python's syntax. If you do need to install Python and aren't confident about the task you can find a few notes on the Beginners Guide/Download wiki page, but installation is unremarkable on most platforms.

Learning
Before getting started, you may want to find out which IDEs and text editors are tailored to make Python editing easy, browse the list of introductory books, or look at code samples that you might find helpful.

There is a list of tutorials suitable for experienced programmers on the Beginners Guide/Tutorials page. It's also easy for beginners to use and learn, so jump in!

Installing
Installing Python is generally easy, and nowadays many Linux and UNIX distributions include a recent Python. The Python web site provides a Python Package Index (also known as the Cheese Shop, a reference to the Monty Python script of that name). Failing that, just Google for a phrase including the word ''python'' and you may well get the result you need.