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+title = "Python 0.9.1 in 2026: The minimal scripting language that feels like a better Bash"
+date = 2026-01-21
+extra.image = "/assets/images/post-image/python-091.png"
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+
+In the modern world of programming, Python is almost unavoidable.
+No, not the snake. The programming language.
+You'll find it everywhere, and I mean everywhere. 
+
+AI applications? They use Python.  
+Your computer? It uses Python.  
+Robotics? They use Python.  
+Embedded systems? They use Python.  
+Your microwave? Probably uses Python.  
+That random Wii homebrew toolchain from 2010? It uses---  
+Okay, you get it.
+
+My point is, that over the years, Python has become an increasingly popular language.  
+But what if we went back to a time when Python wasn't so popular?  
+A time when Python was still in beta?
+
+Today I present to you, Python 0.9.1!
+
+## A blast from the past
+
+Python 0.9.1 is a vintage programming language by today's standards.  
+Released in early 1991, it's almost 35 years old!  
+Do you know what **else** released in 1991?  
+That's right, the freaking **WORLD WIDE WEB**.  
+Python 0.9.1 is older than the internet as we know it!
+
+With this version of the programming language being that old, 
+you might think it doesn't have any practical purposes or that it's just a gimmick in today's modern world.
+
+But what if I told you that you're wrong?
+
+## The experiment begins
+
+The other day, when I was reading about retro computing, I thought it would be a fun idea to try out Python 1.0!  
+But when I went to the Python releases page, I saw that there was a "pre-1.0/Ancient Releases" section. Out of curiosity, I clicked on it, to see what I would find.  
+Once I saw that they had found an archived version of Python 0.9.1, I knew that I had to try it.
+
+They said they had a pre-built version on conda, so I tried using that first.  
+Though, unsurprisingly, it said it wasn't available (probably because I'm on Linux ARM64 and not x86).
+
+Therefore, I decided I'll just compile it myself!  
+After cloning the [GitHub repo for Python 0.9.1](https://github.com/smontanaro/python-0.9.1){: target="_blank" } and compiling it (tip: if you want to compile it yourself, use make with CFLAGS="-std=c89"), I ran the outputted ./python binary and tried a couple basic things, like declaring variables and printing them out.
+
+After a bit of tinkering and testing some things, I was immediately fascinated by the language design and how featureful this language was, even in 1991.
+
+## Surprisingly useful scripting?
+
+Despite being 35 years old, Python 0.9.1 is quite... useful?
+
+The entire interpreter is **only 288KB** when statically compiled with musl-gcc and stripped! You could probably get it down even more with some optimizations, but I won't cover those in this article.  
+Even better, the standard library is **only 364KB**!  
+The total footprint? A little over 652KB or **just over half a megabyte** for a complete scripting language with classes and OOP.
+
+Compare that to modern Python installations with 100-300MB, and you'll understand why this feels refreshing.  
+Also, did I mention that it compiles in mere seconds?
+
+The syntax is quite familiar to anyone who's worked with Python before, which is most if not all developers.
+
+For a pre-1.0 release of the language, it's got quite a few features!
+- Classes and OOP
+- Exception handling
+- Modules and imports
+- range() from modern Python
+- Run commands and capture their output/status codes
+- and more untested!
+
+It feels a lot like Python but... before it became bloated!  
+Guido really had the fundamentals right from the start.  
+I could totally see this language being used as a Bash alternative for scripting, or maybe in some embedded systems/IoT applications!
+
+## Debugging a 35-year-old bug
+
+While experimenting with Python 0.9.1, I noticed that the random number generator (whrandom) wasn't working! After looking at the code of `whrandom.py`, I had a theory.  
+"Hmmm, maybe the epoch timestamp seed from 2026 is too large?"  
+
+So, that's it, right? Just seed the random number generator with your own values?  
+It turned out, no, seeding it with smaller values didn't work either!
+
+So I looked at what was failing again, and saw that it was the multiplication.  
+I tried to reproduce the steps myself, and BOOM, it overflowed!
+
+"Why would 171 * 21 be failing? That shouldn't be overflowing at all!" I thought to myself.
+As a joke, I tried 1 * 1 to see if it would fail, and to my surprise, it did!
+
+That's when I realised something fishy was going on. Apparently, all multiplication was causing an integer overflow!
+
+So, I spent some time searching through the codebase and found the function that handles multiplication: `int_mul` from `intobject.c`. Now all I needed to do was find the issue. Luckily, the function was only a couple lines, and the issue was quite apparent.
+
+One of the conditions that checks if the multiplication result overflowed was checking if the integer was less than 0x80000000. On a 32-bit system, this would be correct: it's checking if the product was less than -2147483648.  
+But on a 64-bit system, suddenly, bit 31 is no longer the sign bit (the sign bit is now bit 63) and that 0x80000000 gets padded to 0x0000000080000000, which is **positive 2147483648**. This would make the check "if the result is less than 2147483648, then crash because we think it overflowed."
+
+As you can see, this is not ideal. To fix it, I patched the code to use the hardcoded numbers 2147483647 and -2147483648 in the overflow checks instead of hex, solving our overflow issue.
+
+After patching, the code ran! Multiplication worked fine, and the random number generator was also working!
+
+## Conclusion
+
+Python 0.9.1 is surprisingly quite a useful language and could possibly have some real-world applications! It seems well fit for a Bash/shell scripting alternative, or some embedded systems applications where you need a simple language with minimal footprint.
+
+Although there were some hiccups with multiplication along the way, I have made a [patched version](https://github.com/RealArslaanYT/python-0.9.1-patched-QoL){: target="_blank" } that fixes this issue and a couple more, and also adds some QoL improvements that make it easy to get up and running on any modern system.
+
+The improvements/fixes are as follows:
+
+- Fixed int_mul integer overflow bug in src/intobject.c on 64-bit systems
+- Added -std=c89 to CFLAGS in Makefile for compatibility with GCC 15+
+- Added a `make install` target that installs to /opt/python091 by default (python is at /opt/python091/bin/py091), this can be changed with the INSTALL_DIR env variable.
+- Fixed PYTHONPATH to be relative to the INSTALL_DIR used in `make install` target
+
+More information about how to get up and running with Python 0.9.1 is in the `README.md` of the GitHub repo for the patched version linked above. Feel free to open any GitHub issues or contact me if you have any further questions.
+
+---
+
+Thanks for reading my blog post!  
+I'm a 12-year-old developer making niche tech content here on my website and also on YouTube, so I really appreciate the support!  
+I'll be coming out with a YouTube video corresponding to this blog post soon, and this page will be updated to show that when the time comes.  
+Feel free to [subscribe to my YouTube channel](https://youtube.com/@DevWithArslaan) and follow me on other socials!