A Brief History of Python

author of Python Guido van Rossum

Guido van Rossum is the author of Python, an interpreted, interactive object-oriented programming language. In the late 1980s, Van Rossum began work on Python at the National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science in the Netherlands, or Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica (CWI) as it is known in Dutch. Since then, Python has become very popular among developers, who are attracted to its clean syntax and reputation for productivity.

Python Implementation started on December, 1989 and reached version 1.0 in January 1994. Python 2.0 was released on October 16, 2000 , with many major new features, including a cycle-detecting garbage collector (in addition to reference counting) for memory management and support for Unicode. However, the most important change was to the development process itself, with a shift to a more transparent and community-backed process. Python 3.0, a major, backwards-incompatible release, was released on December 3, 2008 after a long period of testing. Many of its major features have also been backported to the backwards-compatible, while by now unsupported, Python 2.6 and 2.7.


python

There are two production-ready versions of Python 2.x and Python 3.x . The recommended version is 3.x, which is supported by most widely used libraries. Although 2.x is still widely used, it will not be maintained after January 1, 2020 .

Python Versions



Version Release Date
Implementation started December, 1989
Internal releases at CWI 1990

Python 0.x



Version Release Date
Python 0.9.0 (alt.sources) February 20, 1991
Python 0.9.1 February, 1991
Python 0.9.2 Autumn, 1991
Python 0.9.4 December 24, 1991
Python 0.9.5 (Mac only) January 2, 1992
Python 0.9.6 April 6, 1992
Python 0.9.7 ( beta) Unknown, 1992
Python 0.9.8 January 9, 1993
Python 0.9.9 July 29, 1993

Python 1.x



Version Release Date
Python 1.0.0 January 26, 1994
Python 1.0.2 February 15, 1994
Python 1.0.3 May 4, 1994
Python 1.0.4 July 14, 1994
Python 1.1 October 11, 1994
Python 1.1.1 November 10, 1994
Python 1.2 April 13, 1995
Python 1.3 October 13, 1995
Python 1.4 October 25, 1996
Python 1.5 17 February 1998
Python 1.5.1 14 April 1998
Python 1.5.1p1 6 August 1998
Python 1.5.2 30 April 1999
Python 1.5.2p1 6 July 1999
Python 1.5.2p2 22 March 2000
Python 1.6 5 September 2000

Python 2.x



Version Release Date
Python 2.0 16 October 2000
Python 2.0.1 22 June 2001
Python 2.1 15 April 2001
Python 2.1.1 20 July 2001
Python 2.1.2 16 January 2002
Python 2.1.3 8 April 2002
Python 2.2 21 December 2001
Python 2.2p1 29 March 2002
Python 2.2.1 10 April 2002
Python 2.2.2 14 October 2002
Python 2.2.3 30 May 2003
Python 2.3 29 July 2003
Python 2.3.1 23 September 2003
Python 2.3.2 3 October 2003
Python 2.3.3 19 December 2003
Python 2.3.4 27 May 2004
Python 2.3.5 8 February 2005
Python 2.4 30 November 2004
Python 2.4.1 30 March 2005
Python 2.4.2 28 September 2005
Python 2.4.3 29 March 2006
Python 2.4.4 18 October 2006
Python 2.5 19 September 2006
Python 2.5.1 18 April 2007
Python 2.5.2 21 February 2008
Python 2.5.3 19 December 2008
Python 2.5.4 23 December 2008
Python 2.6 1 October 2008
Python 2.6.1 4 December 2008
Python 2.6.2 14 April 2009
Python 2.6.3 2 October 2009
Python 2.6.4 25 October 2009
Python 2.6.5 19 March 2010
Python 2.6.6 24 August 2010
Python 2.6.7 3 June 2011
Python 2.6.8 10 April 2012
Python 2.6.9 29 October 2013
Python 2.7 4 July 2010
Python 2.7.1 27 November 2010
Python 2.7.2 11 June 2011
Python 2.7.3 9 April 2012
Python 2.7.4 6 April 2013
Python 2.7.5 15 May 2013
Python 2.7.6 10 November 2013
Python 2.7.7 31 May 2014
Python 2.7.8 1 July 2014
Python 2.7.9 10 December 2014
Python 2.7.10 23 May 2015
Python 2.7.11 5 December 2015
Python 2.7.12 26 June 2016
Python 2.7.13 17 December 2016
Python 2.7.14 16 September 2017
Python 2.7.15 30 April 2018
Python 2.7.16 02 March 2019
Python 2.7.17 19 October 2019

Python 3.x



Version Release Date
Python 3.0 3 December 2008
Python 3.0.1 13 February 2009
Python 3.1 27 June 2009
Python 3.1.1 17 August 2009
Python 3.1.2 21 March 2010
Python 3.1.3 27 November 2010
Python 3.1.4 11 June 2011
Python 3.1.5 9 April 2012
Python 3.2 20 February 2011
Python 3.2.1 10 July 2011
Python 3.2.2 4 September 2011
Python 3.2.3 10 April 2012
Python 3.2.4 7 April 2013
Python 3.2.5 15 May 2013
Python 3.2.6 11 October 2014
Python 3.3.0 29 September 2012
Python 3.3.1 7 April 2013
Python 3.3.2 15 May 2013
Python 3.3.3 17 November 2013
Python 3.3.4 9 February 2014
Python 3.3.5 9 March 2014
Python 3.3.6 12 October 2014
Python 3.3.7 19 September 2017
Python 3.4.0 16 March 2014
Python 3.4.1 18 May 2014
Python 3.4.2 4 October 2014
Python 3.4.3 25 February 2015
Python 3.4.4 06 December 2015
Python 3.4.5 26 June 2016
Python 3.4.6 17 January 2017
Python 3.4.7 25 July 2017
Python 3.4.8 4 February 2018
Python 3.4.9 8 August 2018
Python 3.4.10 18 March 2019
Python 3.5.0 13 September 2015
Python 3.5.1 07 December 2015
Python 3.5.2 27 June 2016
Python 3.5.3 17 January 2017
Python 3.5.4 25 July 2017
Python 3.5.5 4 February 2018
Python 3.5.6 8 August 2018
Python 3.5.7 18 March 2019
Python 3.5.8 29 October 2019
Python 3.6.0 23 December 2016
Python 3.6.1 21 March 2017
Python 3.6.2 17 July 2017
Python 3.6.3 03 October 2017
Python 3.6.4 19 December 2017
Python 3.6.5 28 March 2018
Python 3.6.6 27 June 2018
Python 3.6.7 20 October 2018
Python 3.6.8 24 December 2018
Python 3.6.9 02 July 2019
Python 3.6.10 18 December 2019
Python 3.7.0 27 June 2018
Python 3.7.1 20 October 2018
Python 3.7.2 24 December 2018
Python 3.7.3 25 March 2019
Python 3.7.4 08 July 2019
Python 3.7.5 15 October 2019
Python 3.7.6 18 December 2019
Python 3.7.7 10 March 2020
Python 3.8.0 14 October 2019
Python 3.8.1 18 December 2019
Python 3.8.2 24 February 2020


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