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'Computer History Museum' Honorees Include Python Creator Guido van Rossum (computerhistory.org)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the fine-fellowships dept.

On Wednesday the Computer History Museum, "the world's leading institution exploring the history of computing and its transformational impact on society," proudly announced the three Fellow Award honorees for 2018:
  • Dov Frohman-Bentchkowsky -- "For the invention of the first commercial erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), which enabled rapid development of microprocessor-based systems."
  • Dame Stephanie Shirley CH -- "For a lifetime of entrepreneurship promoting the growth of the UK software industry and the advancement of women in computing."
  • Guido van Rossum -- "For the creation and evolution of the Python programming language, and for leadership of its community."

"We are delighted to induct these outstanding new Fellows with diverse contributions in hardware, in services, and in software," said Len Shustek, the Museum's board chairman. "They are true heroes of the Digital Age."


2 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Question... by fluffernutter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Python strikes a really good balance between readability, simplicity, and power. The library support for the language is enormous. Want to write a GUI app? Wxpython. Want to make an asynchronous application? Twisted. Wamp server? Autobahn. Want to connect it to redis? pyredis. Want to do job queueing? Many available. You get the point.

    --
    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  2. Re: Question... by orlanz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Python has a lot of strengths:

    -it is old and stable
    -very easy to learn, install, & expand
    -very easy to read other's code!!
    -good documentation & tutorials
    -easy conceptualizations (int, list, dict, string, method, class, generator)
    -hugh library that addresses 90% of common problems
    -pretty big, stable, & open community
    -good leadership; similar to Linux, but more dictator-like and less foul language.
    -you can start small and slowly build & expand your knowledge.
    -takes a good middle road in terms of hiding vs exposing complexity
    -easy to prototype solutions

    There are shortcomings of course. Most other languages do some of the above better. Perl for example is fairly good at most of the above but it comparibly falls short in terms of code maintenance & legibility.

    The leap to Python 3 was pretty bad for the community. I just switched 2 months ago. But it's not that hard (nor easy) to switch.