Guido van Rossum

Guido van Rossum ( born January 31, 1956) is a Dutch software developer, best known as the author of the Python programming language. He is the brother of the Dutch typographers and software developer Just van Rossum.

Van Rossum grew up in his native Netherlands and graduated in 1982 at the University of Amsterdam, his master's degree. Later he worked at various research institutes, including the Netherlands, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, the National Institute of Standards and Technology ( NIST) (Gaithersburg, Maryland ) and the Corporation for National Research Initiatives ( CNRI ) ( Reston, Virginia). In addition, he worked on the Simula programming language derived from ABC.

On the origins of Python van Rossum wrote in 1996:

" For over six years, in December 1989, I was looking for a programming project that would occupy me over the Christmas week. My office would be closed, but I also had to do a PC at home and not much else. I decided to write an interpreter for the scripting language through which I was thinking recently: A successor of ABC, which would also appeal to Unix and C hackers. I chose Python as a working title for the project, because I was in a slightly irreverent humor (and a big fan of Monty Python's Flying Circus). "

In 1999, van Rossum sent a DARPA Computer Programming for Everybody ( German: Programming for everyone ) that proposal in which he stated that his goals for Python. Python is then:

  • Be a simple, intuitive language, the competitors inferior in thickness in nothing
  • Be open source, so anyone can help in the development
  • Have code that is as easy to read as pure English
  • Be suitable for everyday tasks and enable short development times

Many of these ideas have since been realized. Python has grown to become one - especially the Internet - widely used programming language. In the Python community, Van Rossum is as a benevolent dictator for life (English Benevolent Dictator for Life, LMA ) active: He leads the development pythons and reserves the right to take the final decision.

2001 van Rossum the FSF Award was given to the Free Software Foundation at FOSDEM conference in Brussels.

On 23 December 2005 it was announced that van Rossum from then worked for the search engine Google Inc. manufacturer.

As announced on December 7, 2012 van Rossum is now working at Dropbox.

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