python overview building data structures and algorithms requires that we communicate detailed instructions to computer an excellent way to perform such communications is using high-level computer languagesuch as python the python programming language was originally developed by guido van rossum in the early sand has since become prominently used language in industry and education the second major version of the languagepython was released in and the third major versionpython released in we note that there are significant incompatibilities between python and python this book is based on python (more specificallypython or laterthe latest version of the language is freely available at www python orgalong with documentation and tutorials in this we provide an overview of the python programming languageand we continue this discussion in the next focusing on object-oriented principles we assume that readers of this book have prior programming experiencealthough not necessarily using python this book does not provide complete description of the python language (there are numerous language references for that purpose)but it does introduce all aspects of the language that are used in code fragments later in this book the python interpreter python is formally an interpreted language commands are executed through piece of software known as the python interpreter the interpreter receives commandevaluates that commandand reports the result of the command while the interpreter can be used interactively (especially when debugging) programmer typically defines series of commands in advance and saves those commands in plain text file known as source code or script for pythonsource code is conventionally stored in file named with the py suffix ( demo pyon most operating systemsthe python interpreter can be started by typing python from the command line by defaultthe interpreter starts in interactive mode with clean workspace commands from predefined script saved in file ( demo pyare executed by invoking the interpreter with the filename as an argument ( python demo py)or using an additional - flag in order to execute script and then enter interactive mode ( python - demo pymany integrated development environments (idesprovide richer software development platforms for pythonincluding one named idle that is included with the standard python distribution idle provides an embedded text-editor with support for displaying and editing python codeand basic debuggerallowing step-by-step execution of program while examining key variable values