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Definition: Python


A very popular programming language. Python is an object-oriented language that is used to develop AI applications, system utilities, Internet scripts, as well as to integrate components in C and C++. It is also the language of quantum computing. Created by Guido van Rossum in Amsterdam in the early 1990s, it was named after the BBC comedy series "Monty Python's Flying Circus." See AI and quantum computing.

Python is an interpreted language that compiles to bytecode and requires a "virtual machine" for runtime execution. It uses elements from C, C++ and Modula and supports interfaces to popular functions and libraries such as Unix sockets, the Tk GUI library, Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) and X11. See bytecode, CPython, Jython, Cython and PyPy.

The following example converts Fahrenheit to centigrade in Python.

  printf("Enter Fahrenheit: ")
  fahr = float(input)
  cell = ((fahr -32) * 5 / 9, 1)
  printf("Celsius is {}".format(cell))