History of Python

The programming language Python was conceived in the late 1980s, and its implementation was started in December 1989 by Guido van Rossum at CWI in the Netherlands as a successor to ABC capable of exception handling and interfacing with the Amoeba operating system. Van Rossum was Python's principal author and had a central role in deciding the direction of Python (as reflected in the title given to him by the Python community, Benevolent Dictator for Life (BDFL)) until stepping down as leader on July 12, 2018. Python was named after the BBC TV show Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Python 2.0 was released on October 16, 2000, with many major new features, such as list comprehensions, cycle-detecting garbage collector, reference counting, memory management and support for Unicode, along with a change 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 were also backported to the backwards-compatible Python versions 2.6 and 2.7 until support for Python 2 finally ceased at the beginning of 2020. Releases of Python 3 up through 3.12 include the 2to3 utility, which automates the translation of Python 2 code to Python 3.

As of February 2026, Python 3.14.3 is the latest stable release. This version currently receives full bug-fix and security updates, while Python 3.13—released in October 2024—will continue to receive bug-fixes until October 2026, and after that will only receive security fixes until its end-of-life in 2029. Python 3.10 is the oldest supported branch of Python (albeit in the 'security support' phase).