Guido at Google

[JB]

It seems that our master Guido van Rossum had an offer from google and
he accepted it!!

long life to Guido & Goole ! many things to come ;)

ju²

[Tim Peters]

[bo****@gmail.co m]

...
What about the copyright in CPython ? Can I someone take the codebase
and make modifications then call it Sneak ?

Of course they _could_ do that, and even without making modifications
beyond the name change. If you want to know whether it's legal,
that's a different question. Take a copy of the Python license to
your lawyer and buy an opinion worth hearing ;-)

[rbt]

Alex Martelli wrote:

Rhetorical
questions are a perfectly legitimate style of writing (although, like
all stylistic embellishments, they can be overused, and can be made much
less effective if murkily or fuzzily phrased), of course.

Also, email doesn't convey rhetorical questions that well. Facial
expressions and body movement aid the audience in picking up on things
such as this... maybe Google can fix that too ;)

[rbt]

Luis M. González wrote:

Java => Sun
.Net => Microsoft
C# => Microsoft
Linux => too many big name IT companies to mention
Python => ________ ?

I know at least one company responsible for a linux distro (Cannonical
- Ubuntu), which encourages and even pays programmers for developing
applications in Python.
His founder, Mark Shuttleworth, is a python fan.

Aren't most all intelligent people Python fans?

Python is so unbarbaric or one might say 'refined', yet it can be
applied in a practical manner to all sorts of things. It's like having
James Bond as your very own personal body guard ;)

[Alex Martelli]

<bo****@gmail.c om> wrote:
...

So exactly how high is python in Google's priority list ? Or in other
words, if python is in a stand still as it is now, what would be the
impact to Google ? As an outsider, I can only base on public info, like
And so can I, as an insider, when I communicate with people who are not
employed by Google nor have signed non-disclosure agreements.
a press release mentioning Guido has been hired.
If only press releases count, then I believe Google has made few hires
in 2005 -- Elliot Schrage, Johnny Chou, and Vint Cerf, would be about
it, I believe (e.g., I can't even see any press release specifically
about our hiring Kai Fu Lee at http://googlepress.blogspot.com, though
he's mentioned in the press release about Chou).

An example of rhetorical question:
"Do you really think that a specific technology [including a software
one, such as a programming language] cannot have, in certain cases,
*extremely high* strategic priority for organizations with thousands of
employees?" ... Surprisingly, I don't see this as an rhetorical question at all. It is
Then you don't know what "rhetorical question" means; you'll find many
explanations on the web, but one of my favorite is "a question that
conveys a point rather than expects an answer", which is exactly what
this example IS. ((I don't personally find it all that surprising that
you don't know what a given English expression means)).
quite netural to me as a "I don't agree with you" without indication of
silliness, just a style of writing.

As I said, and I quote:
Rhetorical questions are a perfectly legitimate style of writing

although they can be overused, or weakened if they're fuzzy or badly
expressed. More specifically, a rhetorical question may often be used
"for effect" and emphasis, as several of the definitions you'll find on
the web mention.
Alex

[Alex Martelli]

Carsten Haese <ca*****@uniqsy s.com> wrote:

On Thu, 2005-12-22 at 07:01, Peter Hansen wrote:

bo****@gmail.co m wrote:

So exactly how high is python in Google's priority list ? Or in other
words, if python is in a stand still as it is now, what would be the
impact to Google ?

Since when is Python in a standstill?

I believe bonono meant the question in the hypothetical sense of "If
Python would stand still in its current state, what would be the impact
to Google?" but didn't know how to ask it correctly.

Answering generically rather than on the basis of any inside
information, like for any other technology, a lot would depend on how
other technologies "competing" for similar uses are faring.

If _every_ programming language were suddenly to undergo the same
"standing still", then the technological stasis would affect every
company using programming languages, regardless of their specific
technology choices: productivity growth would slow across the board (not
stop, of course -- cfr. e.g. Tenner's "Our Own Devices" for very
readable analysis of the effects of the developments of technology
versus technique) but the competitive situation would be unaffected.

If, on the other hand, technology X was to suddently stand still while
competing technology Y keeps showing real improvements, this would
progressively tilt the competitive playing field against companies
heavily invested in X and not in Y; eventually such companies would have
to pay the costs of switching to Y, or suffer a deterioration in their
competitive position.

That Google's heavily invested in Python is hardly inside information (I
believe we have a quote to that effect by Peter Norvig on python.org).

Of course, this pretty obvious analysis treats "Python" as a whole
technology -- it doesn't particularly care whether "improvemen ts" come
to the language per se, to the libraries, to the implementation, etc, it
just takes as "improvemen t" any change that does enhance existing users'
productivity (indeed, changes that do so without requiring any training
or much work, such as compiling an unchanged language to faster code,
might have more immediate impact than new language features, which would
only enter into use slowly and gradually).
Alex

[Alex Martelli]

Renato <re************ @gmail.com> wrote:

all of the native administration tools of RedHat (all versions) and
Fedora Core are written in python (system-config-* and/or
redhat-config-* ). And even more importantly, yum (the official
software package manager for Fedora and RHEL) and Anaconda (OS
installer) are written in Python, too.

BTW, Chip Turner (from RedHat, and deeply involved in those
developments) happened to start at Google the same day I did;-).
Alex

[Graham Fawcett]

Peter Hansen wrote:

Graham Fawcett wrote:

Steve Holden wrote:

Nicola Musatti wrote:
Of course, I'm going on vacation next week and there was talk
about a one-way ticket to Mexico. The real question is will they let me *back* in? :-)
I would be careful coming back across the border. I heard that the PSU

[suspicous premature end-of-sentence]

Steve, I hope that the PSU is just jamming your comms, and not holding
you captive over the holidays for your transgressions against the
cabal!

At about the same instant that he sent that message to group, I was
trying to call Steve on Google Talk and he suddenly went offline. I
haven't seen him since.

There is no Steve Holden, and he has never been at war with Eurasia.
Remove the P, S and U keys from your keyboard immediately.

double-plus-good'ly yours, ...umm... doble-l-good'ly yor,

Graham

[Kent Johnson]

Cameron Laird wrote:

While I don't understand the question, it might be pertinent to
observe that, among open-source development projects, Python is
unusual for the *large* number of "forks" or alternative imple-
mentations it has supported through the years <URL:
http://phaseit.net/claird/comp.lang....varieties.html >.

If you are maintaining that page - JPython is now called Jython and has a web site at
http://www.jython.org.

Kent

[Brian van den Broek]

Graham Fawcett said unto the world upon 2005-12-22 08:18:

Steve Holden wrote:

Nicola Musatti wrote:
Of course, I'm going on vacation next week and there was talk
about a one-way ticket to Mexico. The real question is will they let me *back* in? :-)

I would be careful coming back across the border. I heard that the PSU

[suspicous premature end-of-sentence]

There one weapon is surp

[Ilias Lazaridis]

Gary Herron wrote:

Ilias Lazaridis wrote:

Greg Stein wrote: [...]

provided a LOT of support to a large number of open source
organizations.
I hope that you invest some time to _organize_ the Open Source Projects.

Starting with Python and it's project-structure (e.g. build-process)
and documentation (e.g. ensuring standard-terminology is kept, like
"class")

e.g.: where can I find an UML diagramm of the Python Object Model?

Even Ruby has one:

http://lazaridis.com/case/lang/ruby/...bjectModel.png [...]
And finally:

If Mr. van Rossum is now at Google, and Python is essentially a Mr.
van Rossum based product, then most possibly the evolution-speed of
Python will decrease even more (Google will implement things needed by
Google - van Rossum will follow, so simple).

I mean, when will this language finally become a _really_ fully
Object-Oriented one, with a clean reflective Meta-Model?

Thus I can see Python pass this this _simple_ evaluation (which it
does not pass in its current implementation) :

http://lazaridis.com/case/lang/python.html

-

I have around one year to await.

You don't appear to understand Open Source very well.

I understand some of the several (partly contrary) meanings of "Open
Source".
Python is the way it is because we, the community, *like* it that way.
It evolves in directions that we (all) decide it is to evolve. Guido is
our leader in this because we trust him and *choose* to follow his lead.
If you want something changed you don't wait and you don't whine, you
join the community with a reasoned argument for why your idea would make
it a better language in *our* eyes.

So how about it... What's your complaint,
As expressed above, I am afraid about pythons evolution-speed and futher
evolution in general.

a) Missing clear and concise documentation, e.g. of Python Object Model,
like UML diagramm:

http://lazaridis.com/case/lang/ruby/...bjectModel.png

b) Leadership (Board/Leader) should engourage change suggestions and
analytical feedback, whilst accepting "analyst-role" in addition to
"implemento rs-roles" (_both_ are contributions! This should be
communicated by the Board/Leader to the Communicty):

[EVALUATION] - E02 - Support for MinGW Open Source Compiler
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...cd74aa26617f17

c) I mean, when will python become _really_ fully Object-Oriented, with
a clean reflective Meta-Model? Thus it will pass this simple evaluation:

http://lazaridis.com/case/lang/python.html
what's your solution,
http://lazaridis.com/efficiency/textual.html
http://lazaridis.com/efficiency/process.html

[alpha status, comments via email or contact-form are welcome]
and why should we listen?
Cause this would increase the evolution-speed of python.

This would contribute to its success.
Gary Herron

..

--
http://lazaridis.com