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Brief History
The C programming language was Developed/Founded by Dennis Ritchie along with the team working on Unix in 1972 at At&T Bell Labs. The BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language) was modified into a new programming language created by Dennis Richie and Ken Thompson called B. This language was found insufficient for the Unix operating system, so it was once again modified into what we now know as the C programming language. C is faster than B and became the code which Unix was ultimately built upon. This was the first time a high-level language was implemented into a full computer operating system and lead to a leap in operating system advancement.
The C Programming Language book acted as an unofficial guide to programming with C but soon after official specifications came out for the language. The X3J11 committee formed by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 1983 was to make an official specification for the language and in 1989 the standard documentation was published. Later on, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) took over the specifications. These specifications were updated time after time and as of today ISO/IEC 9899:2018 (C17) is the most recent C specification.
C gradually gained traction first within the At&T Bell Labs company itself then to outside programmers. The good ol' trusty C Programming Language book by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Richie was published in 1978 and gained widespread popularity.
Python Language Flavors
Since Pythons initial release, various offshoots of the Python programming language, of flavors, have been introduced to maintain use of the beloved programming language while adding in the functionality of other languages.
CPython
CPython is the original implementation of Python which we will be learning throughout this tutorial. Think of CPython as Vanilla Default Python. This interpretation works by compiling our Python code directly into byte-code and then running that code in real time. Most other flavors of Python use CPython as a base.
Cython
Cython, unlike CPython, is a variant of Python which actually compiles our Python code into C code before execution. Cython compiles the entire code at the beginning rather than compiling in real time during execution. Cython is faster than CPython and should be preferred while working with large time-sensitive applications.
Cython is used in conjunction with CPython as an extension and allows developers to write a single program using both CPython and Cython.
PyPy
PyPy is a compiler written in RPython that uses Just In Time (JIT) compilation to speed up the execution time. JIT compiles code at run time rather than before the execution of our Python code. PyPy is much faster than CPython.
Jython
Jython provides interoperability between Java and Python. Jython compiles Python code to Java runtime-executable code. With Jython, Java libraries can be used in Python programs allowing Python to utilize functionalities normally only available in Java.
Iron Python
PyPy is a compiler written in RPython that uses Just In Time (JIT) compilation to speed up the execution time. JIT compiles code at run time rather than before the execution of our Python code. PyPy is much faster than CPython.
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