Python is a universal, interpreted, high-level programming language. It was developed in 1991 by Guido van Rossum and is named after the comedy group Monty Python. The current version, 3, was released in 2008, with new features being added all the time. Python is so widely used that it is preinstalled on most operating systems. Simply search your operating system for “Python,” or open the command line and type. If, contrary to expectations, it is not installed, you can download and install Python from python.org.