Guido van Rossum on Python past, present and future

Written by Alex Armstrong

Sunday, 20 March 2011

The creator of Python, Guido van Rossum, reveals a lot about the way the language was created, about the moratorium on development and on the future in a video interview.

Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python and Benevolent Dictator For Life - BDFL - of the Python project was interviewed about his favourite subject at this year's Pycon 2011.

He has lots of opinions on Python that are worth hearing. In particular he tells us about his ideas and difficulties with asynchronous callbacks and other aspects of parallel programming, about freezing the design of Python, about Python 3 and much more.

The comments on the Python development moratorium are interesting because it seems that Guido proposed it "with tongue in cheek" only to be surprised that a lot of people thought it was a good idea.

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There are also some thoughts on exactly how old Python is but at the end they nevertheless celebrate its 20 year birthday with cake.

It has to be admitted that the presentation is a little slow, Guido is speaking off the cuff and there are plenty of pauses, but if you are interested in Python it is well worth the effort.

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The Video is no longer available - if anyone knows where a copy can be found please email editor@i-programmer.info.

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Further reading