---
title: "Which came first, Python or Twitter?"
description: "Python vs Twitter: Python came first, by 15 years — 1991 against 2006. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/python-vs-twitter/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Python or Twitter?

**Which came first, Python or Twitter?: Python**

1991 — 15 years before Twitter

Python came first, by 15 years. Guido van Rossum released version 0.9.0 publicly.

## Side by side

|  | Python | Twitter |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1991 | 2006 |
| Date | 1991-02-20 | 2006-03-21 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Guido van Rossum released version 0.9.0 publicly. | Jack Dorsey posted the first tweet. |

## Python

Python was started as a hobby project over Christmas 1989 and first released publicly in February 1991 — four years before Java, JavaScript, PHP and Ruby, all of which arrived in 1995. Most people assume it is much newer because its popularity arrived twenty years after it did. It is named after Monty Python, not the snake.

## Twitter

The first tweet — "just setting up my twttr" — went out on 21 March 2006, and the service opened publicly that July. The 140-character limit came from SMS: a text message allows 160 characters and 20 were reserved for the username. When the limit doubled to 280 in 2017 the SMS constraint had been irrelevant for years.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Python or Twitter?

Python, by 15 years — 1991 against 2006.

### When did Python start?

1991. Guido van Rossum released version 0.9.0 publicly.

### When did Twitter start?

2006. Jack Dorsey posted the first tweet.

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## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]