Python Creator, Guido van Rossum, in Q&A at PyCon.

Guido van Rossum is a Dutch programmer best known as the creator of the Python programming language, for which he was the “Benevolent dictator for life” (BDFL).

At the online Pycon 2021 he answered questions from the python community in a “Ask me anything” session. He talked about why comprehension helped python become popular, reflecting on his school-day narrations classes.

He responded to a question on python running mobile applications and web. For web development he mentioned it’s the world of javascript. Van Rossum explained how translating python, using web assembly or web browser extensions might work. He mentioned different languages have different goals (mentioning companies, like Dropbox, using python for its backend servers). On mobile development, he explained that it would be nice if a micro python or mid python can be used (for memory issues) as opposed to C/Python.

Other Noteworthy Languages

The Q&A also featured talks on why Rust is an interesting language and the traction it’s gaining. According to van Rossum it is “a great language for certain things… improved on C++ in some areas… makes it harder to bypass checks in the compiler and solves (that) memory allocation problem in a near perfect way”

He mentioned Go (Golang) as “the most pythonic” of all new general purpose language. He also touched on Julia as an “interesting take on something python-like”, but is limited in many areas as compared to python. It is a niche language and is superior in its niche.

Touching on Typescript as an interesting language, he mentioned it “did what python is still trying to figure out”. Saying it also learns from python as javascript learns from python. He also spoke on python being used for introductory programming classes in colleges.

A question on his biggest learning from python 2.0 to python 3.0 transition was asked. He explained that making assumptions that users will be very comfortable using the new version was a mistake. He said transitioning to python 4.0 (if there ever will be one) will not be the same way as from 2.0 to 3.0.

Naming Python

Speaking on the name, he said it was influenced by a python circus program on Dutch TV. He also said the name is a rebellion against popular naming norms (after historical figures). More info can be accessed here.