Python is a widely used programming language. Similar to Java, it is primarily an object-oriented language (see the Java / OOP page for more information on that). However, compared to Java, Python is designed to be extremely readable and usually requires fewer lines of code. To see this simplicity, here is a “Hello World!” program in Python:
print “Hello World!”
Furthermore, Python has a “batteries included” philosophy, meaning that many important and useful libraries are already included. This makes Python a very good place to start for new programmers.