List of Python software

The Python programming language is actively used by many people, both in industry and academia for a wide variety of purposes.

Organizations using Python

Google uses Python for many tasks including the backends of web apps such as Gmail and Google Maps and for many of its search-engine internals.
NASA is using Python to implement a CAD/CAE/PDM repository and model management, integration, and transformation system which will be the core infrastructure for its next-generation collaborative engineering environment.
Pythonology lists numerous Python success stories in many types of application and problem domains.

Educational uses of Python

As of 2005, Python is becoming more popular for teaching computer programming. Its strengths for teaching include its syntactic simplicity, flexible typing, and interactive interpreter.

Python uses fewer symbols than languages like Java and C. For example blocks inside loops and IF statements are indicated by indentation rather than curly braces ({}), and the end of a line does not have to have a semicolon. Some beginning students often have trouble initially with memorizing where curly braces and semi-colons go. With Python, students can skip memorization of formal syntax and move on to more practical applications. Similarly, with Java, and C++, variables types must be declared before being used. That is not needed in Python which allows students to develop programs much more quickly.

The interactive interpreter is an extremely valuable aid to learning and experimentation. Learning-by-doing is about trying things out and seeing what happens. The faster you can get results from your experiment, the faster that learning produces results. Using the interactive interpreter in place of a compiler can be helpful with initially learning the language or even quickly learning a new library.

Software Using Python

BitTorrent, the original implementation and several derivatives
Blender, a popular open source 3D modeler
Chandler, a personal information manager including calendar, email, tasks and notes support that is currently under development
Civilization IV videogame and the newly released computer game uses boost.python to allow the Python programming language access to many parts of the game (including the style and content of all interface screens)
Mailman, one of the more popular packages for running email mailing lists
Kombilo, go games' database manager and browser.
modul8, a powerful video DJ software partially written in Python
MoinMoin, a popular wiki engine in Python
OpenRPG, a virtual table on which to play Role Playing Games over the internet
Plone, a user-friendly and powerful open source Content Management System
Portage, the heart of Gentoo Linux. An advanced package management system based on the *BSD style ports system
Solipsis, a system for massively shared virtual world
Trac, bug/issue tracking database, integrated with MoinMoin wiki and Subversion source version control
Turbogears, an application framework composed of Cherrypy, SQLObject, MochiKit, and KID templates
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, a videogame, uses Python for game scripting
ViewVC, a web-based interface for browsing CVS and SVN repositories
Zope, an object-oriented web-application platform. Zope includes an application server with an integrated object-oriented database and a built-in web-based management interface
Battlefield 2, a first person shooter that uses python for its configuration scripts
Indian Ocean Tsunami Detector, a free mobile phone software for tsunami prediction.
EVE Online, a space Multi Massive Online Role Playing Game.
SPE - Stani's Python Editor, a free, open-source Python IDE for Windows, Linux & Mac with wxGlade (GUI designer), PyChecker (Code Doctor) and Blender (3D) support.
Morpheus, P2P file sharing Free software.

Packages for Python

The Python Cheese Shop and Vaults of Parnassus are two primary directories of hundreds of Python packages

matplotlib, an extension providing matlab-like plotting and mathematical functions
Numeric Python, a language extension that adds support for large, multi-dimensional arrays and matrices
SciPy, a library of scientific and numerical routines
SimPy, a discrete-event simulation package;
Biopython, an international association of developers of freely available Python tools for computational molecular biology.
PyOpenGL, a package that allows 3D rendering using Python
Soya 3D, a high-level 3D game engine for Python
Pygame http://www.pygame.org Python game development
Python Imaging Library, a module for working with images
PyGTK, http://www.pygtk.org/, a popular cross-platform GUI library based on GTK+; furthermore, other GNOME libraries also have bindings for Python
PyQt, another popular cross-platform GUI library based on Qt; as above, KDE libraries have bindings too
wxPython, a port of wxWidgets and a popular cross-platform GUI library for Python

PyObjC, a Python-Objective C bridge that allows one to write Mac OS X software in Python
py2exe, compiler that turns Python scripts into standalone Windows programs

CherryPy, a Python-powered web framework
Django, another Python-powered web framework
Topsite Templating System, another Python-powered web framework
TurboGears, a web framework combining CherryPy, SQLObject, and Kid
ZODB a Python-specific object-oriented database
Cheetah, a Python-powered template engine and code-generation tool
mod_python, an Apache module allowing direct integration of Python scripts with the Apache web server
Quixote (software) a framework for developing Web applications in Python
Twisted, a networking framework for Python

See more recommended modules at Useful Modules in the Python.org wiki.

Software directories

Python Cheese Shop (also called the Python Package Index or PyPI) is the official directory of Python software libraries and modules.
ActiveState O'Reilly Python Cookbook contains hundreds of code samples for various tasks using Python.
Python Projects and Modules lots of useful code, as well as several articles on Python Programming.
Vaults of Parnassus — Links to resources.
Python 3D Software Collection — pointers to packages specifically useful in the production of 3D software and/or games with Python

Python implementations

Python – The reference implementation, also known as CPython
Jython – Python coded in Java
IronPython – Python for .NET and Mono platforms
Stackless Python - Python with coroutines
Psyco - not an implementation, but JIT compiler for CPython
PyPy – Python coded in Python
Parrot – Virtual machine being developed mainly as the runtime for Perl 6, but with the intent to also support dynamic languages like Python, Ruby, Tcl, etc. Can currently execute a subset of Python
Logix – Python alternate front-end with macros
Movable Python- An alternative distribution of CPython for Windows. It can run off a USB stick and provides a Portable Programming Environment.