Its development started by Guido van Rossum in 1990 at CWI in Amsterdam. The name comes from his favorite TV show, "Monty Python's Flying Circus". Development has moved from company to compamy, eventually ending at the Python Software Foundation where it remains to this day.

Python can be used in many different operating systems, and even though it is copyrighted, it can be resold commercially.

The official website can be found at www.python.org. Python's tutorial, by Guido van Rossum, can be found at http://docs.python.org/tut/

How to Think like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python is a tutorial/online book that is useful for both beginning and more experienced programmers alike. It covers most of the basics of the Python programming language, and moves on to more advanced concepts. It has lots of examples/explanations and helpful tips.