If you have been within the software development industry for the last 20 years, you most certainly have heard of a programming language named Python. Created by Guido van Rossum, Python first appeared in 1991 and has captured the hearts of many software developers across the globe ever since.
However, how is it that a language that is over 20 years old is still around and is gaining more and more popularity every day?
Well, the answer to this question is simple. Python is awesome for everything (or almost everything). Python is a general-purpose programming language, which means that you can create simple terminal applications, web applications, microservices, games, and also complex scientific applications. Even though it is possible to use Python for different purposes, Python is a language that is well known for being easy to learn, which is perfect for beginners as well as people with no computer science background.
Python is a batteries included programming language, which means that most of the time you will not need to make use of any external dependencies when developing your projects. Python's standard library is feature rich and most of the time contains everything you need to create your programs, and just in case you need something that is not in the standard library, the PyPI (Python Package Index) currently contains 117,652 packages.
The Python community is welcoming, helpful, diverse, and extremely passionate about the language, and everyone in the community is always happy to help each other.
If you still not convinced, the popular website StackOverflow published this year's statistics about the popularity of programming languages based on the number of questions the users add to the site, and Python is one of the top languages, only behind JavaScript, Java, C#, and PHP.
It is a perfect time to be a Python developer, so let's get started!
