Python

basicwidespread

Python is an easy-to-read, free programming language on which most artificial intelligence systems and data analysis are built today.

In plain terms

A programming language is used to give instructions to the computer. Python is one of the friendliest: its lines are almost readable like a simple English sentence, with few parentheses and special characters. It is like a well-written recipe that even someone who is not a chef can follow.

Its popularity is not due to its speed, but to the fact that there is a ready-made building block for almost everything. If you want to process a table, build a website, or train a neural network, someone has already written the basics and published them for free. It works like a huge construction set from which you simply take the necessary pieces off the shelf.

In the AI world, Python has become the common language. Language models are mostly trained in Python, researchers publish their code in it, and AI agents often write and run Python programs when they need to calculate or analyze data.

How it works

You write the program as plain text in a file; the instructions line up one after another, and indentation marks the related parts.
The interpreter program reads and executes the code step by step, so you can try what you wrote immediately without separate compilation.
If you need a ready-made solution for a task, you install a package with a single command from a shared repository (PyPI) holding hundreds of thousands of them, and bring it into your program with one line.
Heavy calculations are often performed in the background by parts written in faster languages; Python then acts as a conductor, only specifying when things must happen.
The same program typically runs unchanged on Windows, Mac, and Linux, on your own machine and on a server in the cloud.

An everyday example

You upload an Excel spreadsheet to an AI assistant and ask it to draw a chart of your monthly expenses. Behind the scenes, the assistant often writes a few lines of Python code, runs it, and returns the result as an image. You see only the chart, but a Python program did the work.

Who is affected

developerMost AI tools, models, and agents are built in Python, so it is almost unavoidable in this field. → Code

jobseeker, new graduateIt is one of the most frequently requested skills in job postings for data analysis, automation, and AI-adjacent roles. → Work & HR

parent, student, teacherIn many schools and universities, this is the first programming language because it offers quick success even for beginners. → Education & Family

employeeRepetitive office tasks, such as merging spreadsheets or renaming files, can be automated with a few lines of Python and now also with AI. → Work & HR

A common misconception

MythPython itself is artificial intelligence, so anyone who uses Python is using AI.

In realityPython is just a general-purpose tool with which you can write accounting software, a website, or a game just as you can an AI system. The AI is provided by the models and libraries built on top of it, not the language itself.

Limits and risks

It is slower than languages closer to the machine (such as C++ or Rust), so the parts requiring high speed are usually written in another language underneath.
Anyone can upload to the shared repository (PyPI), so neglected and malicious packages exist there, sometimes under names misleadingly similar to popular ones. Install only well-known, widely used packages and check the exact spelling of the name.
If AI writes the code for you, it may be faulty even if it appears to work at first glance: verify it or have it reviewed before running it on important data.
Package and language versions do not always interoperate, so an older program may crash after an update.

Similar, but not the same

JavaScript – JavaScript is primarily the language for websites running in browsers, while Python is mainly used for data processing, automation, and AI development.
PyTorch – PyTorch is not a separate language but a library for Python that you can use to build and train neural networks.
Jupyter notebook – A notebook is a workspace where you see the code, the result, and the explanation in one place; Python is the language most often written in it.

Related concepts

Broader

programming language, open source, software development

Narrower

PyTorch, TensorFlow, Jupyter notebook, pandas, NumPy

On the edge

JavaScript, coding agent, API, data science, machine learning

A brief history

Guido van Rossum from the Netherlands began developing the language in the late 1980s, with the first public release appearing in 1991. Its name comes not from a snake but from the British comedy troupe Monty Python. The main version in use today, Python 3, was released in 2008.

Where things stand

By late 2026, Python is one of the most widely used programming languages in the world, and practically the default in AI development and data analysis. With the spread of coding agents, more and more Python code is written not by humans but by AI.

Status: 2026 November

In the news

Appears in 1 Agent Age stories; the curve shows weekly occurrence in the news magazine.

Is there still a point in teaching programming? Expert debate from Logo to AIAug 14, 2026 · Education & Family

Also known as

Python · Python 3 · Python nyelv · Python programming language · Python code · Python-szkript · CPython · py

Sources

This entry was machine-edited and has undergone machine expert review; the “In the news” section updates automatically from Agent Age stories.