A (very) brief selective history of Python#
Python was first published in February 1991 by Dutch programmer Guido van Rossum.
From the get-go Python
- had a focus on clean syntax,
- emphasized readability and
- was designed to be extensible.
Early versions already show many of the core Python capabilities available in
modern Python. In fact, looking at code running on really ancient Python
doesn't actually feel very different 
.
With its permissive F(L)OSS license and Guido turning out to be a highly competent Python community lead - lovingly and jokingly dubbed the "Benevolent dictator for life" (BDFL), a role from which he stepped down in 2018 - Python found evolutionary language development, steady growth and application in very many domains.
Since around 2012-2014 Python gained massive adoption in the scientific and data analytics world, boosting its popularity to unprecedented heights.
For some historical perspective, here's the first public releases of other popular programming languages:
Some subjectively selected Python milestones#
Python 0.9.0 (1991)#
1st public release ever, already with classes, exception handling, functions, basic types, modules.
Python 1.0.0 (1994)#
Python reaches 1.0! Selected highlights: double quotes allowed for strings as well as single quotes, lambda anonymous functions, map(), filter(), reduce() functions for functional programming support, range objects.
Zope (1998)#
Open source web application and content manager framework. Pioneers web object publishing and object database.
Python 1.5.2 (1999)#
Fondly remembered by some author(s) as their 1st ever personally used Python version. Extremely stable run in production for many years.
Python 1.6 (2000)#
Unicode support: new unicode datatype.
Python 2.0 (2000)#
"Python Enhancements Proposal" (PEP) process established, list comprehensions.
Python 2.2 (2001)#
Unification of types (written in C) and classes (written in Python), "new style classes", generators.
NumPy 1.0 (2006)#
Python library for multi-dimensional array and matrix calculations. Previously Numeric, part/basis of SciPy.
Python 2.7 (2010)#
The last Python 2 minor release line.
Python 3.0 (2008)#
Aka "Python 3000" or "Py3k": Backward compatibility-breaking new major version:
print is now a function, all text strings are unicode objects, function
annotations (and many many more changes).
Anaconda 0.8.0 (2012)#
Data science Python distribution, package & environment manager.
Python 3.3 (2012)#
Python 3.3 restores the u'unicode string' syntax which makes the Python 2 to Python 3 transition way easier than before.
Python 3.5 (2015)#
Greatly improved async programming, now with syntactic support. Also, type hints and matrix multiplication operator.
Guido steps down as Python BDFL (2018)#
After having the final Python design responsibility and say-so since 1991 Guido van Rossum decides to step down from his BDFL role.
The Python core developer community decides to establish a steering council of annually elected core developers to take over the language governance powers and duties.
Python 2.7.18 (2020)#
The last ever release of Python 2. Farewell!
Faster CPython (2021)#
Python inventor and BDFL emeritus Guido van Rossum gets tired of retirement and joins Microsoft to push the "Faster CPython" project, together with other expert contributors.
Python 3.11 (2022)#
The "Faster CPython" project yields impressive first results:
Python 3.11 can be up to 10-60% faster than Python 3.10, with an average 1.22x speedup in the standard benchmark suite()
Python 3.12 (2023)#
f-strings get more powerful and Python gets even friendlier with improved error messages.
Python 3.13 (2024)#
The latest and greatest Python (at the time of writing): Python 3.13.2 (2025)