Top 11 Features of Python You Must Know (2024)

Python is a high-level, general-purpose, self-contained programming language designed to meet the needs of computer scientists, software developers, and college students interested in coding. Python was created in the early 1980s by Guido van Rossum while he was at IBM. The language is named after its inventor. It’s become one of the most popular programming languages in recent history.

Python is a high-level, interpreted, dynamic object-oriented programming language that can be used to program applications or websites. It is also known as an object-oriented programming (OOP) language. The main benefits of using Python instead of other languages are that it is very easy to start programming with and because of its flexible syntax, it can be used to program almost any kind of software application.

Python is an open-source language that’s free to use and has a wide range of features that make it easy to customize. It’s also a great choice for beginners to learn Python because it’s easy to pick up and use. In addition to its ease of use, Python has a number of other features that make it an excellent choice for programmers who want to get into the world of software development.

In this article, we will discuss some of the major features of Python that make it stand out from other languages.

What is Python?

Before diving deep into the key features of Python, let us first take a look at what Python is. Python was developed as a successor to the ABC programming language and was first released it in 1991 as Python 0.9.0. Python is one of the most highly-ranked programming languages of today. Python is a high-level general-purpose programming language whose design philosophy mostly emphasizes code readability with the use of significant code.

Writing code in Python for both small and large-scale projects becomes very easy even for the budding coders of today as the language constructs and Object-Oriented Approach of Python make the code extremely clear and logical. Python supports a variety of programming paradigms like Object Oriented Programming, Structured Programming, Functional Programming, etc., and has a rich set of libraries like NumPy, Pandas, etc. which makes it a great choice for a variety of technical fields like Data Science, Machine Learning, etc.

Python has a variety of features to offer to its users (we will learn about the features of Python in the next section of this article) and therefore, in order to crack the interviews of a lot of big startups and companies like Google, Flipkart, Amazon, Facebook, etc. it will be extremely good for one to have a good command on Python and have knowledge about its features. Python is now available in version 3.10. It is open source and can be downloaded for free from its official website.

Key Features Of Python

Now that we know what Python is, let us take a look at some of its key features of Python:

1. Easy To Learn and Readable Language

Python is extremely easy to learn. Its syntax is super simple and the learning curve of Python is very smooth. It is extremely easy to learn and code in Python and the indentation used instead of curly braces in Python makes it very easy to read Python code. Perhaps, because of this, a lot of schools and universities, and colleges are teaching Python to their students who are beginning their journey with coding.

2. Interpreted Language

Python is an interpreted language (an interpreted language is a programming language that is generally interpreted, without compiling a program into machine instructions. It is one where the instructions are not directly executed by the target machine, but instead, read and executed by some other program known as the interpreter) and an IDLE (Interactive Development Environment) is packaged along with Python. It is nothing but an interpreter which follows the REPL (Read Evaluate Print Loop) structure just like in Node.js. IDLE executes and displays the output of one line of Python code at a time. Hence, it displays errors when we are running a line of Python code and displays the entire stack trace for the error.

3. Dynamically Typed Language

Python is a dynamically typed language. In other words, in Python, we do not need to declare the data types of the variables which we define. It is the job of the Python interpreter to determine the data types of the variables at runtime based on the types of the parts of the expression. Though it makes coding easier for programmers, this property might create runtime errors. To be specific, Python follows duck typing. It means that “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.”

4. Open Source And Free

Python is an open-source programming language and one can download it for free from Python’s official website. The community of Python users is constantly contributing to the code of Python in order to improve it.

5. Large Standard Library

One of the very important features because of which Python is so famous in today’s times is the huge standard library it offers to its users. The standard library of Python is extremely large with a diverse set of packages and modules like itertools, functools, operator, and many more with common and important functionalities in them. If the code of some functionality is already present in these modules and packages, the developers do not need to rewrite them from scratch, saving both time and effort on the developer’s end. Moreover, the developers can now focus on more important things concerning their projects. Also, Python provides the PyPI (Python Package Index) which contains more packages that we can install and use if we want even more functionality.

6. High-Level Language

A high-level language (HLL) is a programming language that enables a programmer to write programs that are more or less independent of a particular type of computer. These languages are said to be high-level since they are very close to human languages and far away from machine languages. Unlike C, Python is a high-level language. We can easily understand Python and it is closer to the user than middle-level languages like C. In Python, we do not need to remember system architecture or manage the memory.

7. Object Oriented Programming Language

Python supports various programming paradigms like structured programming, functional programming, and object-oriented programming. However, the most important fact is that the Object-Oriented approach of Python allows its users to implement the concepts of Encapsulation, Inheritance, Polymorphism, etc. which is extremely important for the coding done in most Software Industries as objects map to entities in real-world and lot of real-world problems can be solved using the Object-Oriented Approach.

8. Large Community Support

With one of the biggest communities on StackOverflow and Meetup, Python has gained popularity over the years. If we need any kind of help related to Python, the huge community is always there to answer our queries. A lot of questions about Python have already been answered on these sites and Python users can reference them as per requirement.

9. Platform Independent

Platform independence is yet another amazing feature of Python. In other words, it means that if we write a program in Python, it can run on a variety of platforms, for instance, Windows, Mac, Linux, etc. We do not have to write separate Python code for different platforms.

10. Extensible and Embeddable

Python is an Embeddable language. We can write some Python code into C or C++ language and also we can compile that code in C/C++ language. Python is also extensible. It means that we can extend our Python code in various other languages like C++, etc. too.

11. Graphical User Interface (GUI) Support

Yet another interesting feature of Python is the fact that we can use it to create GUI (Graphical User Interfaces). We can use Tkinter, PyQt, wxPython, or Pyside for doing the same. Python also features a large number of GUI frameworks available for it and various other cross-platform solutions. Python binds to platform-specific technologies.

Conclusion

So, in conclusion, we hope that we have been able to deliver knowledge to our readers about what Python is and what the key features it has to offer to millions of coders all around the world. Python is extremely easy to understand and therefore, millions of people all around the world are beginning to pick up Python for a number of fields.

Many big companies have separate interview rounds to check a candidate’s Python programming skills and therefore, if you are up for an interview in the next couple of months, we would highly suggest you get hands-on with programming in Python and using its various features. Python is definitely the programming language of the future and its tremendous popularity and usage in today’s world hint at the fact that it is here to stay for a long period of time. Hence, if one knows how to code in Python, one will definitely benefit a lot from it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q.1: What are the 3 benefits of Python?

Ans: Three benefits of Python are as follows:

It is an easy programming language to read, write and learn.
It finds its application in a variety of fields like Data Science, Machine Learning, Software Engineering, etc. Hence, if someone is good at Python programming, one can easily find a job in any of these fields.
Python is free and open source and it has vast community support. It has a lot of rich libraries to offer to us like NumPy, Pandas, etc. which can help its users a lot by allowing them to not focus on re-inventing the wheel and focus on the actual problem statement. Here is a free course on Python to get started.

Q.2: What is the unique feature of Python?

Ans: All the unique and key features of Python have been discussed in the article under the section: “Key Features Of Python”.

Q.3: What is the scope of Python?

Ans: Python is a promising programming language with a bright future programming language, has consistently served as the best programming language for a wide range of fields including application and web development, game development, system administration, scientific and numeric computing, GIS, Mapping, and many others.

Q.4: What is the importance of learning Python?

Ans: Python is being used in a lot of fields nowadays like Natural Language Processing, Data Science, Machine Learning, Software Engineering, etc. It is extremely easy to learn and understand and therefore, it is very important to learn Python in today’s technology-driven world.

Top 11 Features of Python You Must Know