Python Version History

Python Software Foundation (PSF) used to support two major versions, Python 2.x & Python 3.x. PSF supported Python 2 because a large body of existing code could not be forward ported to Python 3. So, they supported Python 2 until January 2020, but now they have stopped supporting it.

Python 3.0 was released on December 3rd, 2008. It was designed to rectify certain flaws in the earlier version. This version is not completely backward-compatible with previous versions. However, many of its major features have since been back-ported to the Python 2.6.x and 2.7.x version series. Releases of Python 3 include utilities to facilitate the automation of Python 2 code translation to Python 3.

The following table lists all the important versions of Python:

Version Release Date Important Features
Python 0.9.0 February 1991
  • Classes with inheritance exception handling
  • Functions
  • Modules
Python 1.0 January 1994
  • Functional programming tools (lambda, map, filter and reduce).
  • Support for complex numbers.
  • Functions with keyword arguments
Python 2.0 October 2000
  • List comprehension.
  • Cycle-detecting garbage collector.
  • Support for Unicode. Unification of data types and classes
Python 2.7.0 - EOL - Jan 2020 July 2010
Python 3 December 2008
  • Backward incompatible.
  • print keyword changed to print() function
  • raw_input() function depreciated
  • Unified str/Unicode types.
  • Utilities for automatic conversion of Pytthon 2.x code
Python 3.6 December 2016
Python 3.6.5 March 2018
Python 3.7.0 May 2018
  • New C API for thread-local storage
  • Built-in breakpoint()
  • Data classes
  • Context variables
  • More..
Python 3.8 October 2019
  • Assignment Expression
  • Positional-only parameters
  • Parallel filesystem cache for compiled bytecode files
  • More..
Python 3.9 - Current Version October 2020
  • Dictionary Merge & Update Operators
  • New removeprefix() and removesuffix() string methods
  • Builtin Generic Types
  • More..