Guido Goes Google

revividus writes "It seems that Python creator Guido van Rossum has received an offer from Google, and accepted it. Here is also some confirmation."

Comments

that's it?

[nazsco]

well, let's hope the dupe has more info than those two lines.

Re:that's it?

[revividus]

Yeah, I know. I had nothing to add, sorry. ;-)

Did you want me to say that Google was a search engine and that Python was a programming language?

Re:that's it?

[anaesthetica]

Next time try throwing in some over-the-top, sensationalized, flamebait speculation. More points if it's a complete non-sequitur. For example:

"It seems that Python creator Guido van Rossum has received an offer from Google, and accepted it. Here is also some confirmation. Does this finally confirm that vi is better than emacs?"

or

"It seems that Python creator Guido van Rossum has received an offer from Google, and accepted it. Here is also some confirmation. Is this move calculated to counter Apple's move to Intel?"

See? It's not so hard.

Re:that's it?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

No, "not to start a flamewar" is old-school. These days, the tactic is to say something that you can be reasonably sure will get modded up to +5, but trying to make yourself look rebellious and daring by prefixing it with, "I know I'll get modded down for this, but ..."

I love Python, but...

[ShatteredDream]

I really do think it has been hampered by having a less rigorously standardized basic class library than Java or .NET. It would be great to see Python get some better documentation tools as well so that it'd be easy to generate documentation on par with the Java and .NET documentation.

And of course if Google wanted to really screw with both Sun and Microsoft, especially Microsoft, they could create their own cross-platform web and gui toolkits and a free RAD GUI builder a la Visual Studio for Python. If they could create a Python framework on par with Swing or Windows Forms, there'd be quite a bit of wailing and gnashing of teeth in both camps :)

An assumption

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone seems to assume that his main purpose with Google is to do Python.

I'm not saying that assumption is not true. It's just that he is a huge talent. If I had a gargantuan project to run, I'd hire him no matter what the language.

I wonder if the management types have figured out that anyone who can create and run a large successful open source project is a much better manager than the average MBA.

Re:An assumption

[linuxmop]

This is a well-founded assumption. Much of Google's internal development is done in Python. Thus, it is important that Python development continue quickly and continue in a direction that benefits Google. They cannot risk that Guido find himself unable to afford to continue as Python project leader.

No, they are most certainly hiring Guido to continue Python development. It would be a disaster for Python, and thus for Google, if they diverted his talent toward some random Google project.

Re:An assumption

[gstein]

Ha! Guido would quit in a heartbeat if you tried to make him manage people. That just isn't where he's at. He's absolutely brilliant and loves to write excellent code. Great. We're gonna let him do just that :-)

In any case: yeah, we hired him because we want him to work on Python itself. And as John says later in this thread -- about half his time.

Re:His name is Guido?

[moro_666]

I dont think that the name Guido will give you any guarantees on the language quality ...

However, could this be Google's move against Sun and Microsoft ?

Sun has Java
Microsoft has C#

It would be pretty logical that google would like to control something that is comparable to sun and microsoft's bigtime server languages. Python has moderately fast bytecode (google stuff could improve a lot here) and it's got a decent oop model and a threading api. i/o is also usable. i think zope fans can hype their favourite thing in the responding posts too.

i can't wait for the first version of GPython or Gython !

One Liners...

[Anonymous Coward]

The winning offer was the one that had first-line indented paragraphs.

We just love a guy that gets so wrapped up in his work!

We've got penguins, we've got pythons, and we've got a lemur with a minigun...this zoo rocks!

After hearing the report, Ballmer threw a Hissssy fit.

Someone reported a problem with a mouse at Google Central and the recruiter got to work on hiring the python guy.

With a keen eye on competition, Google is just trying to catch up to the number of reptiles employed by Microsoft.

Becoming the new Xerox Parc

[suso]

So is google becoming the new Xerox Parc?

Re:Becoming the new Xerox Parc

[Tumbleweed]

Considering they're actually bringing out products that people USE, I'd say not. :)

Better article headline:

[killmenow]

google.py: import Guido

Re:Semi-Off-Topic Python vs. Perl discussion

[gorzek]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I did make the leap from perl to Python, and have no regrets.

I still use perl for quick-and-dirty text-processing and so forth, but Python is excellent for creating scripts you want to be able to maintain later. The syntax is sparse (compared to most other languages), so there isn't as much code to maintain. I found most of my favorite perl features were also represented (foreach, regular expressions, etc.)

People who've never spent much time with Python will gripe about the whitespace. It was never an issue for me, and I've never had problems with it.

If you plan to do any significant object-oriented programming, Python is very good for that. For procedural programs, the only edge it has over perl is readability, due to the concise syntax.

One thing to keep in mind with Python, however, is that it does NOT convert between numbers and strings automatically, while perl does. It's no big deal to cast a number as a str() or cast a string as int(), but if you don't know about it beforehand, it will get you.

From what I understand, Python is also very nice for metaprogramming, but I've never used it for that. I have used it for quick command-line utilities, GUI apps (with wxPython), and game programming. The object-oriented features are really why I prefer it over perl. They are intuitive, and you have a lot of power over how the objects behave in various circumstances.

If you have any C# experience, I've found you can port C# code to Python with only minor (mostly cosmetic) changes. (This obviously excludes using libraries written for C#, though--I was referring to the syntax of the code itself as being easily ported.)

Sorry if this explanation wasn't technical enough. I was just trying to lay out the general reasons I found a move from perl to Python relatively painless.

New Windows screen saver

[Skiron]

'Flying chairs', coded by Steve 'monkey' Balmer.