Python was released in 1991 by Guido van Rossum. The history behind the name is, in the 1970s, there was a popular BBC comedy TV show called Monty Python’s Fly Circus and Van Rossum happened to be the big fan of that show. So, when Python was developed, Rossum named the project Python.

The Python version release dates are as follows:

Python 1.0 - Jan 1994
Python 1.5 - 31 Dec 1997
Python 1.5.2 - April 1999
Python 1.6 - 05 Sep 2000
Python 2.0 - 16 Oct 2000
Python 2.0.1 - 22 Jun 2001
Python 2.1 - 17 Apr 2001
Python 2.2 - 21 Dec 2001
Python 2.3 - 29 Jul 2003
Python 2.4 - 30 Nov 2004
Python 2.5 - 19 Sep 2006
Python 2.6 - 01 Oct 2008
Python 2.7 - 03 Jul 2010
Python 3.0 - 03 Dec 2008
Python 3.1 - 27 Jun 2009
Python 3.2 - 20 Feb 2011
Python 3.3 - 29 Sep 2012
Python 3.4 - 16 Mar 2014
Python 3.5 - 13 Sep 2015
Python 3.6 - 23 Dec 2016
Python 3.7 - 27 Jun 2018
Python 3.8 - 14 Oct 2019

Some of the most recent final releases of versions:

Python 2.4.6 - 19 Dec 2008
Python 2.5.6 - 26 May 2011
Python 2.6.9 - 29 Oct 2013
Python 2.7.10 - 23 May 2015
Python 2.7.13 - 17 Dec 2016
Python 3.5.3 - 17 Jan 2017
Python 3.6.1 - 21 Mar 2017

Difference between Python2 & Python3

Print:

Python 2 treats “print” as statement rather a function.
Python 3 explicitly treats “print” as a function.

Integer Division:

Python 2 treats numbers without any digits. (Output of expression 3 / 2 is 1, not 1.5). To get the result 1.5, you would have to write 3.0 / 2.0.
Python 3 evaluates 3 / 2 as 1.5 by default, which is more intuitive for new programmers.

List Comprehension Loop Variables: Common name for the variables that is iterated over in a list comprehension as a global variable get interchanged. This is fixed in Python 3.

Unicode Strings: By default Python 3 stores strings as Unicode unlike Python 2.

Raising Exceptions: Python 3 requires different syntax for raising exceptions.

Python 2:raise IOError, “some error message”
Python3: raise IOError(“some error message”)

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Python Versions

Difference between Python2 & Python3

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