- Work began on Python in 1989 by Guido Van Rossum and it was released in 1991.
High level - Python is a powerful system-accessible interpreted scripted language, that has higher level data structures e.g. Python's lists (resizable arrays) and dictionaries (hash tables), the use of which minimises development time as well as code size, resulting in more readable code.
Object Oriented - Python isn't just an OOP language like Ruby or Java, but also borrows some things from functional languages like Lisp and Haskell.
Scalable - Python can be compared to Batch or Unix shell scripting languages. It is not however limited to performing the simple tasks of simple shell scripts, but can be used for larger projects that can expand and grow without growing unwieldy, encourages clean code design, high level structure, and code reuse.
Extensible - It is easy to write extensions to Python - e.g from C, C++, Java etc. Python code in a project can be organised logically by separating code into modules or multiple files. Python's syntax for accessing all modules is the same.
Portable - Because Python is written in C, it can be found on a wide variety of systems.
Core Python Programming - Wesley J. Chun