Python is high-level interpreted, programming language. It supports procedural, object-oriented and functional programming paradigms.

Python is dynamically typed, although since 3.5 it added a module to support type hints. Linters such as Ruff, Flake8, isort or Black.

Python much like Node.js, has it's own package manager, pip, and it's alternatives, the industry standard being Poetry, and the newcomer being uv

Use Cases

Web Dev

Data Sci & Machine Learning

Scientific Computing

Gamedev

Pygame

Syntax

Indentation: Python uses indentation to define code blocks, in the Python style guide it's recommended to keep it at 4 spaces.
Functions: Defined using the def keyword, such as:

   def greet(name):
       return f"Hello, {name}!"

List, Dictionaries an Tuples: Built-in data structures for collections.

fruits = ["apple", "banana", "cherry"]  # List - mutable, ordered
person = {"name": "Alice", "age": 30}   # Dictionary - mutable, key-value pairs
coordinates = (10, 20)                  # Tuple - immutable, ordered

#atom
A virtual environment (venv) is a way for Python to separates the packages and dependencies from a project from the system-wide setup.

Creating a venv

A virtual env is created by the command python -m venv <name>

And it creates a file structure such as:

venv/
├── pyvenv.cfg
├── bin/ (or Scripts/ on Windows)
│   ├── activate
│   ├── activate.bat (Windows)
│   ├── python -> /usr/bin/python3.9
│   └── pip
├── include/
├── lib/
│   └── python3.9/
│       └── site-packages/
└── share/

Activating a venv

To activate it you should run the activate script;

# On Linux/Mac
source myproject/bin/activate

# On Windows Command Prompt
myproject\Scripts\activate.bat

# On Windows PowerShell
myproject\Scripts\Activate.ps1

When activated the shell prompt will change to display the venv name, the PATH will change to prioritize the python & pip in the bin folder.

Deactivating

Just run the command deactivate

It's recommended to not commit virtual envs, thus ignore them in .gitignore.

Poetry and uv have their own way of managing venvs, so refer to those pages.

History

Created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991.
Python 2.x was widely used but reached end-of-life in 2020.
Python 3.x is the current version, with ongoing updates and improvements.

Connections:

Sources:

Python Software Foundation. "Python.org."
McKinney, Wes. "Python for Data Analysis."
Lutz, Mark. "Learning Python."
From: LearnPython

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