History of Python¶

Guido van Rossum started to write Python in December 1989.

History of Python releases¶

Python 3.8: x := 1 assignment expression (PEP 572) and / in function for positional-only parameters (PEP 570)
Python 3.7: async and await become keywords
Python 3.6: f-strings (PEP 498 “Literal String Interpolation”)
Python 3.5:
- Add async and await (not really keywords yet)
- The @ operator (PEP 465 “A dedicated infix operator for matrix multiplication”)
- PEP 448 “Additional Unpacking Generalization”
(Python 3.4: no change)
Python 3.3:
- yield from: PEP 380 “Syntax for Delegating to a Subgenerator”
- u'unicode' syntax is back: PEP 414 “Explicit Unicode literals”
(Python 3.2: no change)
Python 2.7:
- all changes of Python 3.1
Python 3.1:
- dict/set comprehension
- set literals
- multiple context managers in a single with statement
Python 3.0:
- all changes of Python 2.6
- new nonlocal keyword
- raise exc from exc2: PEP 3134 “Exception Chaining and Embedded Tracebacks”
- print and exec become a function
- True, False, None, as, with are reserved words
- Change from except exc, var to except exc as var: PEP 3110 “Catching Exceptions in Python 3000”
- Removed syntax: a <> b, `a`, 123l, 123L, u'unicode', U'unicode' and def func(a, (b, c)): pass
- PEP 3132 “Extended Iterable Unpacking”
Python 2.6:
- with: PEP 343 “The “with” Statement”
- b'bytes' syntax: PEP 3112 “Bytes literals in Python 3000”

Python 0.9.1
Python 1.5.2
Python 0.9.1 .. 2.0 source tarballs
David Beazley tests in 2017 (tweets)
neopythonic by Guido van Rossum: Ramblings through technology, politics, culture and philosophy by the creator of the Python programming language.
History of Python (Wikipedia article)
The History of Python by Guido van Rossum: A series of articles on the history of the Python programming language and its community.