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Python Language Founder Steps Down (zdnet.com)

Posted by msmash on from the end-of-an-era dept.

After almost 30 years of overseeing the development of the world's most popular language, Python, its founder and "Benevolent Dictator For Life" (BDFL), Guido van Rossum, has decided to remove himself entirely from the decision process. From a report: Van Rossum isn't leaving Python entirely. He said, "I'll still be there for a while as an ordinary core dev, and I'll still be available to mentor people -- possibly more available." It's clear from van Rossum's note he's sick and tired of running the organization. He wrote, "I don't ever want to have to fight so hard for a PEP (Python Enhancement Proposals) [PEP 572 Assignment Expressions] and find that so many people despise my decisions." In addition, van Rossum hints he's not been well. "I'm not getting younger... (I'll spare you the list of medical issues.)" So, "I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL, and you all will be on your own." From the email: I am not going to appoint a successor. So what are you all going to do? Create a democracy? Anarchy? A dictatorship? A federation? I'm not worried about the day to day decisions in the issue tracker or on GitHub. Very rarely I get asked for an opinion, and usually it's not actually important. So this can just be dealt with as it has always been. At Slashdot, we had the privilege of interviewing Guido van Rossum, a Computer History Museum honoree, in 2013.

10 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. We'll lose the first generation by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm 60, and yeah, health things creep up on you. We'll lose the first generation of Free Software / Open Source folks soon.

    --
    Bruce Perens.
    1. Re: We'll lose the first generation by ChoGGi · · Score: 1, Insightful

      First gen already started dying off
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  2. Salute to you Sir! by Qbertino · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Thank you for the wonderful language. Someone who devotes such significant portions of his life to the greater good deserves respect. I also hope he has long years and a healthy life to live ahead of him and can watch his baby grown and mature even further. Python is a beautiful language, IT would be poorer without it.

    --
    We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
    1. Re:Salute to you Sir! by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      IT would be poorer without it.

      Yeah, what would we do without code samples whose flow is destroyed by copying and pasting them from webpages? That's really improved my life!

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Salute to you Sir! by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I consider a communication medium that mutilates messages to be defective, not the messages that are being mutilated.

      If the same thing happens to a piece of C code, a) it still works and b) you can run it through indent to get back something human-understandable. Python has to exist in the real world where things like this happen. The people who defend this characteristic of Python clearly do not live where the rest of us live.

      We used character position to control flow by putting things in columns on the older computers. Then we stopped doing that, and it was a significant advance. Then Python started doing it again.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  3. Time to bail out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    SJW takeover in 3....2.......

  4. Re: Questions and observations by TJHook3r · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Python is incredibly popular due mainly to flexibility and ease of use. It's taught in schools so I imagine it will only keep growing although Guido leaving is a bit of a blow.

  5. So Long and Thanks For The Snakes by SoftwareArtist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The IT world would be poorer without all his work. Time for a well deserved vacation.

    --
    "I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
  6. Thank you for Python .... by kbahey · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Detractors aside, Python is a great language. Of course, like all languages it has its warts.

    But flexibility wise, it is awesome.

    Learning Python has been on my to do list for decades, and finally I got to it last year.

    Among the things I developed with it is a small web application specific to one project (a form that users fill, and get back a configuration file). This used the Bottle framework.

    I am also using Micropython on ESP8266 and ESP32 microcontrollers, and it is easy to press Ctrl-C and have a Python prompt over USB! Debugging is very easy, and the language is very easy.

    Not to mention things like Home Assistant, which is written in Python, and writing custom modules for it was pretty easy, once you got to learn HA's API.

    So Guido: thank you so much for decades of making things work for us. I wish I have learned it sooner, but better late than never ...

    --
    2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
  7. Re:(sic)?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Are you fucking stupid? QUOTES are used for that! [sic] means that on top of that, the incorrect spelling is the original author's, not the quoter's!!!

    Are you really this blindingly stupid?