Department of Engineering

An introduction to Python

Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language. It's free, expandable, portable and "easy". It is often compared to Tcl, Perl, Scheme or Java. See

• Computer Languages Timeline

Python is sometimes used within the university as an easy "glue" language to integrate various number-crunching processes, but it's used to write complete programs too. See the advocacy and pythonology pages for points in its favour, and see the list of Organizations using Python.

What's bad about the other languages? See quotes from 'Coders at Work' for comments about C++.

Examples

Here's a short Python by Example document for people already familiar with similar languages.

Programs and documentation

It's installed on our system (python version 2.3.4, at least). Documentation includes

• Instant Hacking(Magnus Lie Hetland)
• Instant Python (Magnus Lie Hetland)
• Python Tutorial (Guido van Rossum)
• Python Library Reference (Guido van Rossum)

Note that Python 3 is out now. This is incompatible with Python 2, so books and add-ons are all having to be re-written!

We've installed

• a Python tutorial for beginners
• idle - a program to make writing Python programs easier.

To start a session click on the icon at the bottom of the DPO terminals' screen and look for "Start Python".

The university is keen on Python on the grounds that it is easy to use, well designed, and rich in packages (add-ons). See their list of Python training courses.

Further Information

See the Python homepage