# Introduction

#Basic#Introduction

# About

Python was created by Guido van Rossum (opens new window) and first released on 1991.

It was named after a TV show "Monty Python's Flying Circus" (opens new window).

Python is a battery-included language that comes with many builtin functions and standard libraries (opens new window) and has a strong ecosystem for numerous open source libraries (opens new window). It is widely used in many scenarios, such as scientific programming, machine learning, web development, application development, and etc.

# Philosophy

See PEP-20 (opens new window).

  • 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!

You can also display them from a Python Shell.

import this
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# Hello world program

print("Hello, world!")
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In the following section we will learn how to setup a Python environment alongside with some useful tools for development.