Python is one of the most successful programming languages of recent years. It’s clean style and emphasis on good practice makes it the language of choice when teaching new programmers.

It is used extensively in the cloud, and is one of the first languages to support Google App Engine. Python is popular among scientific communities through the SciPy package. It’s simplicity makes it easy enough for beginners who use a Raspberry Pi, which was originally targeted to run Python. System administrators, looking for more than shell scripts, also take to Python, given the extensive library support available.

Python is a dynamic language, object-oriented and has features enabling its use as a functional language.  It also supports meta-programming structures and aspects of Lisp and Haskell.