11 ms·

Python 1.0.0 is out (1994)

163 points by sndean 9y ago

timpattinson 9y ago
Pls add (1994)
triangleman 9y ago
Wow it's much older than I thought. As it says in the post, if you want to a view the online doc's just fire up Mosaic. Then compile it on your IRIX box. Those were the days.
- bdcravens 9y ago
  Most languages are. Javascript, Ruby, Java, PHP, ColdFusion - all mid-90s languages.
redstripe 9y ago
Was there ever a DOS binary? That would be worth firing up a VM for.
- ojii 9y ago
  Try building one yourself ;-) https://github.com/python/cpython/releases/tag/v1.0.1 https://github.com/python/cpython/releases/tag/v1.0.1
- Someone 9y ago
  http://legacy.python.org/download/other/ http://legacy.python.org/download/other/: ”Python for MS-DOS Python 2.4.2 for DOS/DPMI, built on the DJGPP platform, is also available”. So, yes, there was one. The link (http://www.caddit.net/pythond http://www.caddit.net/pythond) works, and seems to still have the binary. You will need a ”proper Long Filename Driver for your platform” to fully enjoy it.
- chungy 9y ago
  DOS was supported into the 2.x days. IIRC, 2.3 or whereabouts was the last supported version for DOS.
- zephyrfalcon 9y ago
  There was. I used to maintain one for a while, compiled with DJGPP, long ago (obviously). Links might still work: https://web.archive.org/web/20080828160609/http://zephyrfalcon.org/labs/pythondx.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080828160609/http://zephyrfalc...
- bdarnell 9y ago
  I learned Python 1.4 on DOS (with DJGPP). I think there were binary releases, but you couldn't use them if you needed any third-party C modules. There was no dynamic linking on DOS so you needed to statically link any C code you were using into python.exe. This was a huge pain but it also taught me a ton about both C and Python.
trendia 9y ago
> "Python has been used by hundreds of happy users" Hundreds! > "Please don't ask me to mail it to you -- at 1.76 Megabytes it is unwieldy at least..." I can not even figure out if this means email or snail mail.
- davesque 9y ago
  You're probably joking but, just for kicks and to provide some historical context, my guess is email. I seem to recall that attachment sizes would have been limited to something less than that back then. Also, 1.76 MB could have fit onto two HD floppies which would have made it easy to snail mail. Although it wouldn't have been all that hard to download with a 14.4 modem.
  - kvz 9y ago
    Hold up! Didn’t the floppies I remember store 1.44MB for us?
    - DiThi 9y ago
      Or 1.38 MiB. Parent said _two_ floppies.
    - e12e 9y ago
      Linux could actually store more, as could some custom programs for dos iirc - ms dos had some conservative standards in place due to early floppies being less reliable I think. I initially became aware because the Amiga floppy drive/format was a superset of dos. You could (with appropriate software) read/write dos floppies on the amiga - but you couldn't read/write amiga floppies on pc hw (not even Linux, I think). See "logical formats": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floppy_disk_formats https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floppy_disk_formats
  - xtracto 9y ago
    Also to give more context: Back in the late 90s I remember I had a linuxmail.org web-mail account. It featured a whooping 4MB of space. 4MB! That's why when Google released GMail with 1GB of storage in 2004 ( https://slashdot.org/story/04/04/01/0038200/googles-gmail-to-offer-1gb-e-mail-storage https://slashdot.org/story/04/04/01/0038200/googles-gmail-to... ) it really blew everybody's mind.
senatorobama 9y ago
The most successful language in the last twenty years.
- danieldk 9y ago
  Arguably, that would be Java, which was introduced in 1995. For whatever hey are worth, most language popularity indexes (TIOBE, LangPop) place Java above Python with quite a large margin. Java may not get much exposure here or in startups, but if you go out in the real world of 'boring' business applications, Java is pretty much the defacto language (together with C#).
  - tejinderss 9y ago
    Python surpasses java according to github statistics http://www.benfrederickson.com/ranking-programming-languages-by-github-users/ http://www.benfrederickson.com/ranking-programming-languages...
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - lstyls 9y ago
      Sample bias. I suspect the vast majority of binaries in the wild were compiled with little, if any, code hosted on GitHub.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      The majority of companies across the world don't have any repository on Github. Github is for FOSS projects, or building CV portfolios for startups that think we don't have anything else to do after work.
      - ageofwant 9y ago
        Not so sure about that. Most company repos are private though, like the one I work for.
thinkpad20 9y ago
Interesting to read his description of the language, which sounds pretty much exactly like python is now. It’s a pretty good testament to why python gained and retained popularity. Though not without fault, python is certainly one of the best-designed languages ever created, in my opinion.
- kumarvvr 9y ago
  It may not be the most efficient one out there, but it certainly is the most productive, atleast for me. God I love the language. The only language, that allows my thoughts to flow alongside writing code that allows my thoughts to manifest. I am well experienced with C# as well, but something about statically typed stuff (I worked with C# before the dynamic stuff wasn't added to it) breaks the flow of thoughts. With python, it's like designing systems on paper. Friction-free.
  - y4mi 9y ago
    It would be great to still have static constraints as an option though. I absolutely love the free form in the prototype phase, but once I've got that one nailed and want to make it maintainable... well, I always miss it at that time.
    - kumarvvr 9y ago
      It can be done partially with type-hinting in python. However, quickly iterating through to a solution and then optimizing it in a static language is a workflow that can be adopted. However, that may be necessary for only the most critical parts of an application. With software development moving towards distributed computing, there is a lot of breathing space for languages like Python.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - ageofwant 9y ago
      Yea thats what mypy is for, and that fits my workflow too: Rapidly prototype once the API has stabilised, I add the typehints. For unfammilliar codebases using MonkeyType is now a option too.
ponytech 9y ago
My favorite part: > "If you have a WWW viewer"
AlexCoventry 9y ago
Been using python since 1996/7. Just picked up python 3 and mypy. It's been quite a ride.
dis-sys 9y ago
Python 1.0 is great because back then you don't need to worry about the Python2/3 issue. :)
- davesque 9y ago
  Is it still an issue really? :/ Have been using Python 3 exclusively in production since about a year ago and it really seems like the whole 2/3 thing is starting to blow over. I haven't found any packages I need that aren't 3 compatible and porting to 3 was really way easier than people had made it out to be.
  - IshKebab 9y ago
    Yes. Very much still an issue. There's mountains of Python 2 code still out there and loads of software starts with Python 2 and then maybe adds Python 3 support later. Hopefully. For example [issue #1](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/1 https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/1) for Tensorflow - one of the most popular Python packages out there is "add Python 3 support". It's one of the biggest reasons not to use Python IMO. No other popular language has this issue. The other reasons I wouldn't use Python: 1. Difficult to distribute standalone programs. You end up having to bundle an interpreter which is a pain. 2. So many programs include python interpreters you end up with insane path issues, especially on windows. 3. It's still slow.
    - fake-name 9y ago
      You failed to mention that the linked issue was closed with py3k support released. In 2015. Py2/3 is not an issue in practice.
    - davesque 9y ago
      > It's one of the biggest reasons not to use Python IMO. No other popular language has this issue. No other popular language struggles with issues of backwards incompatibility? That's a huge exaggeration. > Difficult to distribute standalone programs. You end up having to bundle an interpreter which is a pain. I guess then you generally prefer not to use interpreted languages? > So many programs include python interpreters you end up with insane path issues... How is that? There's usually a system Python which system programs should reference explicitly if they care. If you code up a Python program without being careful about its dependencies, then yeah you're asking for trouble. But that's true of any program, whether it needs to locate an interpreter or be compiled against a shared library. None of the pain points you mention are inherently specific to Python. But maybe Python's huge success and ubiquity trick people into conflating general software development issues with Python issues; rather like how people start confusing popular brand names with actual products (e.g. Band-Aids).
kalefranz 9y ago
Want to play with it? conda create -n py1 python=1.0 source activate py1 python Python 1.0.1 (Mar 26 2014) Copyright 1991-1994 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam >>> Sorry Windows, only on macOS and Linux.
- meatbundragon 9y ago
  Does this not work with Ubuntu on Windows? I've been using it as my primary development environment and it seems to work perfectly with the mainstream Ubuntu/linux software I deal with. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/about https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/about
  - RayDonnelly 9y ago
    While we fix bugs in our Linux packages so they work on USW/WSL this one appears to have problems (and I do not expect I will look into them any time soon): Python 1.0.1 (Mar 26 2014) Copyright 1991-1994 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam Segmentation fault (core dumped) .. I did capture the backtrace though; for what it's worth: (gdb) bt #0 0x00000000004212bb in do_mkvalue () #1 0x00000000004210a7 in do_mktuple () #2 0x00000000004211a8 in do_mkvalue () #3 0x00000000004213f2 in vmkvalue () #4 0x00000000004214a1 in mkvalue () #5 0x0000000000422438 in err_input () #6 0x000000000042258c in parse_file () #7 0x00000000004226ae in run_file () #8 0x0000000000422bf3 in run_script () #9 0x000000000042232a in realmain () #10 0x00000000004039f4 in main ()
    - RayDonnelly 9y ago
      Update: stack trace indicates it's trying to run a file, you can use -c to run some commands at least: python -c "print 'hello world'"
    - KindOne 9y ago
      Do a 'bt full'?
      - 9y ago
keypusher 9y ago
I think it's interesting to note the primary usecases / benefits mentioned: more readable than perl, better syntax than bash, easy to follow stacktraces. In short: an object-oriented scripting language. In that respect I think python has succeeded, probably beyond even the author's wildest dreams. And I love python, it's a language I use almost every day. The areas where it falls short are those which it was never designed for, as this announcement reminds us.
- e12e 9y ago
  Also interesting that the first discussion is about the number tower, along with a reference to scheme...
elSidCampeador 9y ago
> "If you have a WWW viewer ..." Just curious, had the term "browser" not caught on by then?
- scrollaway 9y ago
  A "browser"? To browse what? The WWW? Isn't that just a WWW viewer? :)
- xjlin0 9y ago
  gopher? lynx?
  - davesque 9y ago
    I thought lynx was a terminal based web browser or am I wrong?
- davesque 9y ago
  If memory serves, '94 was just before internet access and web browsing became things that everyone had and did. I don't think people had settled on the terminology just yet.
NelsonMinar 9y ago
Guido took a lot of ideas for Python from ABC, a language he worked on previously. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_(programming_language)
jwilk 9y ago
This can be viewed without JS enabled: https://groups.google.com/forum/?_escaped_fragment_=topic/comp.lang.misc/_QUzdEGFwCo https://groups.google.com/forum/?_escaped_fragment_=topic/co...
breatheoften 9y ago
A good automatic code formatter (like JavaScript’s/typescript’s prettier) really really breaks the arguments used by significant white space supporters ... I use a code formatting tool in my python work flow as well but it’s nowhere near as nice/fun as with a non-significant white space language ...
troyharvey 9y ago
Wow. What a gift this language has been. Thanks Guido! I'm using it this morning with GAE. I was using it last night to write a Luigi ingestor for Redis. It's my favorite language.

163 points by sndean 9y ago

Pls add (1994)

Wow it's much older than I thought. As it says in the post, if you want to a view the online doc's just fire up Mosaic. Then compile it on your IRIX box. Those were the days.

bdcravens 9y ago
Most languages are. Javascript, Ruby, Java, PHP, ColdFusion - all mid-90s languages.

redstripe 9y ago

Was there ever a DOS binary? That would be worth firing up a VM for.

ojii 9y ago
Try building one yourself ;-) https://github.com/python/cpython/releases/tag/v1.0.1 https://github.com/python/cpython/releases/tag/v1.0.1
Someone 9y ago
http://legacy.python.org/download/other/ http://legacy.python.org/download/other/: ”Python for MS-DOS Python 2.4.2 for DOS/DPMI, built on the DJGPP platform, is also available”. So, yes, there was one. The link (http://www.caddit.net/pythond http://www.caddit.net/pythond) works, and seems to still have the binary. You will need a ”proper Long Filename Driver for your platform” to fully enjoy it.
chungy 9y ago
DOS was supported into the 2.x days. IIRC, 2.3 or whereabouts was the last supported version for DOS.
zephyrfalcon 9y ago
There was. I used to maintain one for a while, compiled with DJGPP, long ago (obviously). Links might still work: https://web.archive.org/web/20080828160609/http://zephyrfalcon.org/labs/pythondx.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080828160609/http://zephyrfalc...
bdarnell 9y ago
I learned Python 1.4 on DOS (with DJGPP). I think there were binary releases, but you couldn't use them if you needed any third-party C modules. There was no dynamic linking on DOS so you needed to statically link any C code you were using into python.exe. This was a huge pain but it also taught me a ton about both C and Python.

trendia 9y ago

> "Python has been used by hundreds of happy users" Hundreds! > "Please don't ask me to mail it to you -- at 1.76 Megabytes it is unwieldy at least..." I can not even figure out if this means email or snail mail.

davesque 9y ago
You're probably joking but, just for kicks and to provide some historical context, my guess is email. I seem to recall that attachment sizes would have been limited to something less than that back then. Also, 1.76 MB could have fit onto two HD floppies which would have made it easy to snail mail. Although it wouldn't have been all that hard to download with a 14.4 modem.
- kvz 9y ago
  Hold up! Didn’t the floppies I remember store 1.44MB for us?
  - DiThi 9y ago
    Or 1.38 MiB. Parent said _two_ floppies.
  - e12e 9y ago
    Linux could actually store more, as could some custom programs for dos iirc - ms dos had some conservative standards in place due to early floppies being less reliable I think. I initially became aware because the Amiga floppy drive/format was a superset of dos. You could (with appropriate software) read/write dos floppies on the amiga - but you couldn't read/write amiga floppies on pc hw (not even Linux, I think). See "logical formats": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floppy_disk_formats https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floppy_disk_formats
- xtracto 9y ago
  Also to give more context: Back in the late 90s I remember I had a linuxmail.org web-mail account. It featured a whooping 4MB of space. 4MB! That's why when Google released GMail with 1GB of storage in 2004 ( https://slashdot.org/story/04/04/01/0038200/googles-gmail-to-offer-1gb-e-mail-storage https://slashdot.org/story/04/04/01/0038200/googles-gmail-to... ) it really blew everybody's mind.

senatorobama 9y ago

The most successful language in the last twenty years.

danieldk 9y ago
Arguably, that would be Java, which was introduced in 1995. For whatever hey are worth, most language popularity indexes (TIOBE, LangPop) place Java above Python with quite a large margin. Java may not get much exposure here or in startups, but if you go out in the real world of 'boring' business applications, Java is pretty much the defacto language (together with C#).
- tejinderss 9y ago
  Python surpasses java according to github statistics http://www.benfrederickson.com/ranking-programming-languages-by-github-users/ http://www.benfrederickson.com/ranking-programming-languages...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - lstyls 9y ago
    Sample bias. I suspect the vast majority of binaries in the wild were compiled with little, if any, code hosted on GitHub.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    The majority of companies across the world don't have any repository on Github. Github is for FOSS projects, or building CV portfolios for startups that think we don't have anything else to do after work.
    - ageofwant 9y ago
      Not so sure about that. Most company repos are private though, like the one I work for.

thinkpad20 9y ago

Interesting to read his description of the language, which sounds pretty much exactly like python is now. It’s a pretty good testament to why python gained and retained popularity. Though not without fault, python is certainly one of the best-designed languages ever created, in my opinion.

kumarvvr 9y ago
It may not be the most efficient one out there, but it certainly is the most productive, atleast for me. God I love the language. The only language, that allows my thoughts to flow alongside writing code that allows my thoughts to manifest. I am well experienced with C# as well, but something about statically typed stuff (I worked with C# before the dynamic stuff wasn't added to it) breaks the flow of thoughts. With python, it's like designing systems on paper. Friction-free.
- y4mi 9y ago
  It would be great to still have static constraints as an option though. I absolutely love the free form in the prototype phase, but once I've got that one nailed and want to make it maintainable... well, I always miss it at that time.
  - kumarvvr 9y ago
    It can be done partially with type-hinting in python. However, quickly iterating through to a solution and then optimizing it in a static language is a workflow that can be adopted. However, that may be necessary for only the most critical parts of an application. With software development moving towards distributed computing, there is a lot of breathing space for languages like Python.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - ageofwant 9y ago
    Yea thats what mypy is for, and that fits my workflow too: Rapidly prototype once the API has stabilised, I add the typehints. For unfammilliar codebases using MonkeyType is now a option too.

ponytech 9y ago

My favorite part: > "If you have a WWW viewer"

AlexCoventry 9y ago

Been using python since 1996/7. Just picked up python 3 and mypy. It's been quite a ride.

dis-sys 9y ago

Python 1.0 is great because back then you don't need to worry about the Python2/3 issue. :)

davesque 9y ago
Is it still an issue really? :/ Have been using Python 3 exclusively in production since about a year ago and it really seems like the whole 2/3 thing is starting to blow over. I haven't found any packages I need that aren't 3 compatible and porting to 3 was really way easier than people had made it out to be.
- IshKebab 9y ago
  Yes. Very much still an issue. There's mountains of Python 2 code still out there and loads of software starts with Python 2 and then maybe adds Python 3 support later. Hopefully. For example [issue #1](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/1 https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/1) for Tensorflow - one of the most popular Python packages out there is "add Python 3 support". It's one of the biggest reasons not to use Python IMO. No other popular language has this issue. The other reasons I wouldn't use Python: 1. Difficult to distribute standalone programs. You end up having to bundle an interpreter which is a pain. 2. So many programs include python interpreters you end up with insane path issues, especially on windows. 3. It's still slow.
  - fake-name 9y ago
    You failed to mention that the linked issue was closed with py3k support released. In 2015. Py2/3 is not an issue in practice.
  - davesque 9y ago
    > It's one of the biggest reasons not to use Python IMO. No other popular language has this issue. No other popular language struggles with issues of backwards incompatibility? That's a huge exaggeration. > Difficult to distribute standalone programs. You end up having to bundle an interpreter which is a pain. I guess then you generally prefer not to use interpreted languages? > So many programs include python interpreters you end up with insane path issues... How is that? There's usually a system Python which system programs should reference explicitly if they care. If you code up a Python program without being careful about its dependencies, then yeah you're asking for trouble. But that's true of any program, whether it needs to locate an interpreter or be compiled against a shared library. None of the pain points you mention are inherently specific to Python. But maybe Python's huge success and ubiquity trick people into conflating general software development issues with Python issues; rather like how people start confusing popular brand names with actual products (e.g. Band-Aids).

kalefranz 9y ago

Want to play with it? conda create -n py1 python=1.0 source activate py1 python Python 1.0.1 (Mar 26 2014) Copyright 1991-1994 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam >>> Sorry Windows, only on macOS and Linux.

meatbundragon 9y ago
Does this not work with Ubuntu on Windows? I've been using it as my primary development environment and it seems to work perfectly with the mainstream Ubuntu/linux software I deal with. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/about https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/about
- RayDonnelly 9y ago
  While we fix bugs in our Linux packages so they work on USW/WSL this one appears to have problems (and I do not expect I will look into them any time soon): Python 1.0.1 (Mar 26 2014) Copyright 1991-1994 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam Segmentation fault (core dumped) .. I did capture the backtrace though; for what it's worth: (gdb) bt #0 0x00000000004212bb in do_mkvalue () #1 0x00000000004210a7 in do_mktuple () #2 0x00000000004211a8 in do_mkvalue () #3 0x00000000004213f2 in vmkvalue () #4 0x00000000004214a1 in mkvalue () #5 0x0000000000422438 in err_input () #6 0x000000000042258c in parse_file () #7 0x00000000004226ae in run_file () #8 0x0000000000422bf3 in run_script () #9 0x000000000042232a in realmain () #10 0x00000000004039f4 in main ()
  - RayDonnelly 9y ago
    Update: stack trace indicates it's trying to run a file, you can use -c to run some commands at least: python -c "print 'hello world'"
  - KindOne 9y ago
    Do a 'bt full'?
    - 9y ago

keypusher 9y ago

I think it's interesting to note the primary usecases / benefits mentioned: more readable than perl, better syntax than bash, easy to follow stacktraces. In short: an object-oriented scripting language. In that respect I think python has succeeded, probably beyond even the author's wildest dreams. And I love python, it's a language I use almost every day. The areas where it falls short are those which it was never designed for, as this announcement reminds us.

e12e 9y ago
Also interesting that the first discussion is about the number tower, along with a reference to scheme...

elSidCampeador 9y ago

> "If you have a WWW viewer ..." Just curious, had the term "browser" not caught on by then?

scrollaway 9y ago
A "browser"? To browse what? The WWW? Isn't that just a WWW viewer? :)
xjlin0 9y ago
gopher? lynx?
- davesque 9y ago
  I thought lynx was a terminal based web browser or am I wrong?
davesque 9y ago
If memory serves, '94 was just before internet access and web browsing became things that everyone had and did. I don't think people had settled on the terminology just yet.

NelsonMinar 9y ago

Guido took a lot of ideas for Python from ABC, a language he worked on previously. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_(programming_language)

jwilk 9y ago

This can be viewed without JS enabled: https://groups.google.com/forum/?_escaped_fragment_=topic/comp.lang.misc/_QUzdEGFwCo https://groups.google.com/forum/?_escaped_fragment_=topic/co...

breatheoften 9y ago

A good automatic code formatter (like JavaScript’s/typescript’s prettier) really really breaks the arguments used by significant white space supporters ... I use a code formatting tool in my python work flow as well but it’s nowhere near as nice/fun as with a non-significant white space language ...

troyharvey 9y ago

Wow. What a gift this language has been. Thanks Guido! I'm using it this morning with GAE. I was using it last night to write a Luigi ingestor for Redis. It's my favorite language.