Python Creator Guido van Rossum Leaves Google For Dropbox

New submitter mrvan writes "Guido van Rossum, the proclaimed Python Benevolent Dictator For Life, has left Google to work for Dropbox. In their announcement, Dropbox says they relied heavily on Python from the beginning, citing a mix of simplicity, flexibility, and elegance, and are excited to have GvR on the team. While this is, without a doubt, good news for Dropbox, the big question is what this will mean for Python (and for Google)."

Comments

Not a fractal of bad design

[tepples]

What's more elegant and nicer in Python than PHP?

Python isn't a fractal of bad design.

Re:Not a fractal of bad design

[interval1066]

In defense of PHP, Python and Ruby suck in their own ways too...

That's like saying "In defense of a knife to the eye, cheesecake and ice cream have their own drawbacks."

I'm glad some one else will say what I've always said, PHP is a three-headed Satan baby. When the seventh seal was broken and the seventh trumpet sounded, PHP leaped out of the womb and ate its mother, the whore of Babylon.

Big Question?

[folderol]

Why? Maybe he just wanted a change, and wasn't especially concerned about the pay - people do that you know. Sometimes job satisfaction is what does it. Sometimes a fresh set of challenges. Money is severely over-rated as a driver.

Re:Big Question?

[Riddler Sensei]

Money is severely over-rated as a driver.

Only when you already have it. Which, to be fair, he likely does.

Re:What will he be doing at DropBox?

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK he was working on the Python part of Google App Engine, in particular the NDB API.

He has also developed Mondrian, a code review tool that was partially open sourced as Rietveld.

(Not a Google employee, so just going by public knowledge here)

Re:Python VS PHP

[dkleinsc]

I've professionally programmed in both Python and PHP. There's no reasonable competition - Python wins hands down.

A few of the advantages of Python over PHP:

• * The basic library of Python is coherent and well written. PHP's is anything but.
• * Python's syntax allows you to do the same thing as PHP with far less code. For instance, to filter an array in Python, you can do stuff like this:

  filtered = [x for x in unfiltered where x.foo=="bar"]

  In PHP the same thing looks like:

  $filtered = array_filter($unfiltered, function($x) { return $x->foo == "bar"; });

• * Python is massively easier to unit test: You can patch anything you possibly want, including system calls, it has fantastic mocking libraries and testing harnesses.
• * Python supports modularity and has since day one. PHP's closest equivalent, namespacing, was tacked on at the last minute and not used properly.

Re:Python VS PHP

[MrEricSir]

Is that with or without a parachute? Because falling out of an airplane to a grizzy death doesn't sound so bad after you've been programming PHP all day.

Re:Python VS PHP

[H0p313ss]

Is that with or without a parachute? Because falling out of an airplane to a grizzy death doesn't sound so bad after you've been programming PHP all day.

You think PHP is bad? Why in my day we used COM with VB and C++, uphill both ways.

But just try telling that to kids these days. They'll never believe you.

Re:Pay Decrease?

[rk]

Actually, I'd take shoveling out a barn at 500/hr. It would get me exercise and a chance to be alone with my thoughts, which would let me do fun things like programming with python for things I want to program, instead of what someone else wants programmed.

Re:Python VS PHP

[Darby]

ARRGGH!!! &$ )!$!@$ !@ !!&*(!#@!!!!!!!!!

Now while writing an entire sharepoint replacement in one line of perl is impressive, it doesn't really constitute a specific argument against MFC.