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.com]

...
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.com> 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*****@uniqsys.com> wrote:

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

bo****@gmail.com 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 "improvements" come
to the language per se, to the libraries, to the implementation, etc, it
just takes as "improvement" 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
"implementors-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

[Bengt Richter]

On Thu, 22 Dec 2005 09:07:26 -0800, al***@mail.comcast.net (Alex Martelli) wrote:

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;-).

So is google about to determine how many luminaries can fit on the head of a project? ;-)
Seriously, if you heavies do sometimes work on the same project, it would be
interesting to know what modes of co-operation you tend to adopt.

Regards,
Bengt Richter

[Nicola Musatti]

Alex Martelli wrote:

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;-).

Ah, the closed source days! Back then you could just buy the company
and be done with it. Now you have to chase developers one by one all
over the world... ;-)

Cheers,
Nicola Musatti

[EP]

rbt wrote:

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?

Sure, but I am not under the illusion that intelligent people control
the fate of the world
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 ;)

The truth becomes evident: Guido did not invent Python, Q did!

Or is Guido Q?

Reminds me of a story I heard about Guido- he was working at the PSU and

[drew.smathers]

And I have around one year to wait for Ruby to get rid of the nasty
syntax copied from Perl and make it look as beautiful as Python ....
Then I'll consider switching. ;)

Ummm, I'm sorry, did you say clean reflective meta-model???

So this:

caller[0] =~ /in `([^']+)'/ ? $1 : '(anonymous)'

vs. the python example:

filename, line, fname, source = traceback.extract_stack(limit=2)[0]
return fname

is what you call clean?? Hmmm ... interesting.

[Ilias Lazaridis]

dr***********@gmail.com wrote:

And I have around one year to wait for Ruby to get rid of the nasty
syntax copied from Perl and make it look as beautiful as Python ....
Then I'll consider switching. ;)

Ummm, I'm sorry, did you say clean reflective meta-model???
yes.
So this:

caller[0] =~ /in `([^']+)'/ ? $1 : '(anonymous)'

vs. the python example:

filename, line, fname, source = traceback.extract_stack(limit=2)[0]
return fname

is what you call clean?? Hmmm ... interesting.

no, It is not.

I've not yet defined what I would call the "clean way".

-

both code examples were provided from the community (limited responses
from python community).

-

Ruby does not pass the evaluation, too (although it is closer, due to
the clean metadata capability).

-

And: Ruby has even lower evolution speed:

http://lazaridis.com/core/eval/ruby.html

..

--
http://lazaridis.com

[Cameron Laird]

In article <11**********************@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups .com>,
Nicola Musatti <ni************@gmail.com> wrote:

[Cameron Laird]

In article <11**********************@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups .com>,
<bo****@gmail.com> wrote:

[Cameron Laird]

In article <11*********************@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups. com>,
Graham Fawcett <gr************@gmail.com> wrote:

[Thomas Wouters]

On Thu, 22 Dec 2005 19:38:12 +0200, Ilias Lazaridis wrote:

As expressed above, I am afraid about pythons evolution-speed and futher
evolution in general.
Yet you don't seem to be worried for any (Python) specific reason. Python
evolution has known its ups and downs. For instance, back when Guido
worked at CNRI, Guido was one of the few people with direct access to the
CVS repository. The others were, I believe, all CNRI employees (and
trusted Python developers.) This worked fine for quite a bit, since Guido
first did most of the work, and reviewed patches from the community
personally. Towards the end of Guido's employment with CNRI, this had
begun to chafe a bit, and if you look at releasedates and featuresets,
you'll see quite a gap between Python 1.5.2 and Python 2.0. (Python 1.6
doesn't really count, for various historical reasons, but even if you
compare CNRI-funded 1.6 with opensource-developed 2.0 you'll see a large
set of diverse new features.)

What happened was that Python development moved to SourceForge, and more
people got easier access. More trusted developers got write access to the
repository, and more people got involved in writing patches. It also meant
Guido couldn't keep up with development by others, and he (eventually)
solved that by introducing PEPs. (Like much of Python, he probably
wasn't the first to voice the suggestion, but it's quite likely he was
in fact thinking of it, possibly subconciously, before anyone suggested
it...[1] So I don't think whoever voiced it first minds Guido getting the
crdits.) But he didn't think of PEPs before they'd become absolutely
necessary. He didn't sit at CNRI thinking, "Gee, I wish I could give more
people access and accept more community patches, but how do I decide which
ideas are fundamentally good or bad?", then thought up the administrative
layer of PEPs. They showed up when they were needed, in a form that seemed
convenient, and they evolved over time (slowly, and only slightly, as far
as I can tell) to fit the specific needs. The tools to facilitate
evolution grow from necessity. They probably wouldn't work if forced upon
Python.

And the evolution speed in general, regardless of tools that make that
evolution easier, is in fact determined by need. The unification of
types and classes grew out of a need. It was quite a fundamental step in
Python's object model, and one that had been argued long before it
happened, but the actual implementation waited, in my eyes, until exactly
the right time. Obvious practical need for it, good ideas with regards to
implementation, experience from Zope's ExtensionClass and various uses of
the old metaclass hook, and a group of Python programmers quite eager to
play with all the new toys Guido gave them. Heck, I still love playing
with new=style classes and creating subclassable types and subtypes in C.
A few years earlier it wouldn't have ended up the same, for lack of
experience and need, and a few years later would probably have been too
late.
a) Missing clear and concise documentation, e.g. of Python Object Model,
like UML diagramm:
I guess it depends on your idea of clear and concise. I've never, ever,
had a problem with understanding Python's object model. Even new-style
classes only required two PEPs, a few hundred lines each, for me to
understand. I honestly don't care about UML diagrams. And, what's more,
apparently neither does anyone else, or the diagram would have been made
already. In fact, if it's missing, why don't you add it? That's what
opensource is about :)
b) Leadership (Board/Leader) should engourage change suggestions and
analytical feedback, whilst accepting "analyst-role" in addition to
"implementors-roles" (_both_ are contributions! This should be
communicated by the Board/Leader to the Communicty):
Why would that be necessary, if the current system works? Extra layers for
the sake of extra layers, bureaucracy to feed the need for bureaucracy in
itself, seems madness to me. If it ain't broken, don't fix it. I'm sure
the extra formal layers work quite well in other projects, in other
communities, just like the Python setup wouldn't work for those other
projects. But it works for Python, as evidenced by Python's evolution
speed.
c) I mean, when will python become _really_ fully Object-Oriented, with
a clean reflective Meta-Model?

When someone needs it enough to convince Guido it's practical. Python
values practicality above quite a lot of things, like consistency.
Consistency for the sake of consistency, by giving up practicality,
ease-of-use, readability, portability or any of the other important
aspects of Python, will hopefully never happen.

and why should we listen?

Cause this would increase the evolution-speed of python.
This would contribute to its success.

I don't understand where your confidence in these matters comes from.
The 'this' you refer to *might*, in fact, increase the evolution-speed,
although at what cost I am uncertain. I wouldn't be surprised if it cost
Python, or the Python community, its soul. There are a great many people
who think Python is already evolving at quite a high speed, and would
rather see it slow down than speed up. I am almost, but not quite, in that
camp; I think Python is nigh perfect as it is, but I have enormous respect
for the active Python developers, who by and large are insanely smart
people, and I can't but love and be terribly excited with everything they
think up next. And they're friendly people, to boot.

A higher evolution *might* contribute to Python's success. It may also
contribute to its downfall. Forcing an open-source community to do
something it doesn't want to do will *certainly* lead to its downfall.

Spam-spam-spam'ly y'rs,

[1] Either that, or Guido used the time machine to go back and change his
mind. Or everyone else's.
--
Thomas Wouters <th****@xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!

[Fredrik Lundh]

Gary Herron wrote:

So how about it... What's your complaint, what's your solution, and why
should we listen?

Nobody will ever know. Check the comp.lang.python/ruby/lisp/etc archives
for more.

</F>

[Martin v. Löwis]

Cameron Laird wrote:

Apart from a few very mild constraints that prohibit you from little
more than saying that you're Guido and you invented Python, you have
remarkable liberty to adapt Python to your own needs. Moreover, this
freedom is not merely a theoretical principle; *numerous* working
engineers have changed Python to meet their own requirements, and
quite a few of these "modified Pythons" are in production around the
world. I've heard Guido speak words of encouragement to others to do
the same.

And indeed, in the area of "Extending and embedding", this is one
of the strengths of Python. Nobody will object if you add additional
library functions, data types, etc, and still call it Python.

Traditionally, reimplementations of the entire language have called
themselves differently (Jython, IronPython, PyPy,...), just to
distinguish themselves from (what they call) CPython. In all these
cases, the reimplementations strive for compatibility with the
Python language and library references, so nobody object that they
call themselves "Python implementations".

Also, nobody would object if you take some ideas from Python, some ideas
from other languages, and some of your own ideas, and call the result,
say, "Monad". If the language (syntax, semantics) is significantly
different, you shouldn't call it Python.

Regards,
Martin

[blumberg]

lazy bastard

[Bugs]

So when *is* someone (either Guido himself or Google) going to
officially announce that Guido has moved to Google? If at all?

Also, it would be nice to know from Guido's perspective what, if any at
all, impact this will have on Python?

Maybe here? http://www.artima.com/weblogs/index.jsp?blogger=guido Is
this Guido's official blog?

[Greg Stein]

Guido would acknowledge a query, but never announce it. That's not his
style.

This should have a positive impact on Python. His job description has a
*very* significant portion of his time dedicated specifically to
working on Python. (much more than his previous "one day a week" jobs
have given him)

Cheers,
-g

[Robert Hicks]

You mean Jython is still going? ; )

Robert

[casioculture]

Ilias Lazaridis wrote:

Greg Stein wrote:

Yeah... we recognize that we could certainly open-source more of our
software. While we've released some stuff
(code.google.com/projects.html), there is a LOT more that we want to

http://code.google.com/projects.html

do. Getting engineers' 20% time to do that has been difficult.
Thankfully, we know how to fix that and got the okay/headcount to make
it happen. (IOW, it isn't a lack of desire, but making it happen)

When a company like Google open's sources, this means simply nothing
more than:

- the software is not critical to their business (e.g. core-software)
- the internal resources cannot ensure further development

See IBM, SUN and others, which have done the same thing.

But even if we haven't been able to open-source as much code as we'd
like, we *have* been trying to be very supportive of the community.
Between the Summer of Code and direct cash contributions, we've
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 we have a couple other ideas on how to help the open source
community. We're working on it!

The open-source-community can help Google, too!

E.g.: Google needs an public Issue-Tracking-System.

I needed around 30 emails and 2 months until google-groups-support
removed a bug which broke(!) existent links to google archives. (cannot
find the topic. Simply search your support-archives to see the desaster).

With publicity, the team would have removed the bug within one week.

Cheers,
-g

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.

Will see.

.

--
http://lazaridis.com

Hi there, I wonder what comments you would have about XOTCL, or other
OO extensions for tcl, like snit, and dozens more. I looked at the
various scripting languages available to me and decided to go with tcl
as it seemed the most versatile. I can't find it on your page though.
Regards.

[x600y]

JB wrote:

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

Google is merely the new Microsoft and surely just as unethical
at its core.

And your spelling Goole is probably closer to the mark,
since it is merely the next ghoulish big company,
come to restrict our freedoms and blot out the sky.

[Kent Johnson]

Robert Hicks wrote:

You mean Jython is still going? ; )

Yes, I see the smiley but there are too many "is Jython dead?" posts on the Jython lists
for me to leave this alone...

Jython is going strong. Thanks to Brian Zimmer and a grant from PSF it is under active
development again and working towards compatibility with CPython 2.3. And of course the
current 2.1 release is extremely stable and usable as is.

Kent

[Luis M. González]

x6***@yahoo.com wrote:

JB wrote:

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

Google is merely the new Microsoft and surely just as unethical
at its core.

And your spelling Goole is probably closer to the mark,
since it is merely the next ghoulish big company,
come to restrict our freedoms and blot out the sky.

I beg to disagree.
Google is what it is because it creates good and useful products which
everybody enjoy for free. For doing this, they hire the best guns and,
guess what?
These talented people have to eat, like you and me.
Do you expect them to work for free?
Every company needs to make money, otherwise they would die.
But there are many ways to make it, and I think they are as good and
ethical as they can be.

[bearophileHUGS]

This is interesting. With more Python time in Guido's hands maybe Py
3.0 is a bit closer... :-)

I don't know if this is a silly idea:
A small part of the wealth of a modern state is probably determined by
the software it uses/produces, and a small part of this software is
open source or free. This free sofware is used by a lot of people, and
they probably use it to work too, etc.
For a modern government, paying a salary to few (20?) very good open
source programmers can make the whole society "earn" maybe 10 or more
times that money... (The money given from EU to PyPy can be an example
of this).

Bye,
bearophile

[Ilias Lazaridis]

ca**********@gmail.com wrote:

Ilias Lazaridis wrote: [...]

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

[...]
Hi there, I wonder what comments you would have about XOTCL, or other
OO extensions for tcl, like snit, and dozens more. I looked at the
various scripting languages available to me and decided to go with
tcl as it seemed the most versatile. I can't find it on your page
though.
Regards.

I had myself a positive impression about TCL, but a negative one with
the community (and with the many OO extensions for TCL, which would be a
sub-evaluation):

[JAMLANG] - Comparative Evaluation - Draft Version
http://groups.google.com/group/comp....91f3b541d976f5

If you like, you can fill in the evaluation based on tcl/XOTCL (which
would be published then).

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

you can alternatively sent a text-file via email.

If you have further questions, please contact me with private email.

Thank you for your intrest.

Best Regards,

Ilias Lazaridis

..

--
http://lazaridis.com

[Robert Kern]

be************@lycos.com wrote:

This is interesting. With more Python time in Guido's hands maybe Py
3.0 is a bit closer... :-)

I don't know if this is a silly idea:
A small part of the wealth of a modern state is probably determined by
the software it uses/produces, and a small part of this software is
open source or free. This free sofware is used by a lot of people, and
they probably use it to work too, etc.
For a modern government, paying a salary to few (20?) very good open
source programmers can make the whole society "earn" maybe 10 or more
times that money... (The money given from EU to PyPy can be an example
of this).

No, it's not a silly idea. Dean Baker, the Co-Director the Center for Economic
and Policy Research, has proposed for the U.S. government to establish a
Software Developer's Corps. For $2 billion per year, it could fund about 20,000
developers to make open source software. Much of that software would be directly
usable by local, state, and federal governments and thus pay back some, all, or
more of the investment (Dean estimates more). In addition, the general public
also benefits directly.

http://www.cepr.net/publications/windows_2005_10.pdf

--
Robert Kern
ro*********@gmail.com

"In the fields of hell where the grass grows high
Are the graves of dreams allowed to die."
-- Richard Harter

[Ilias Lazaridis]

Fredrik Lundh wrote:

Gary Herron wrote:

So how about it... What's your complaint, what's your solution, and why
should we listen?
Nobody will ever know.

simply review this explanations:

http://lazaridis.com/core/index.html

some people have already understood this in the past.
Check the comp.lang.python/ruby/lisp/etc archives
for more.
evaluations will be listed here shortly:

http://lazaridis.com/core/eval/index.html

(if you find an itresting topic, please send the link)
</F>

..

--
http://lazaridis.com

[Ilias Lazaridis]

Thomas Wouters wrote:
[...]

thank you for your comments.

-

TAG.python.evolution.negate

..

--
http://lazaridis.com

[Alex Martelli]

Nicola Musatti <ni************@gmail.com> wrote:

Alex Martelli wrote:

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;-).

Ah, the closed source days! Back then you could just buy the company
and be done with it. Now you have to chase developers one by one all
over the world... ;-)

Well, you can STILL buy the company -- eBay's bought Skipe (and a slice
of craigslist), Yahoo's bought delicious and flickr, we've bought
Keyhole (and a tiny slice of AOL)... just to mention recent and salient
acquisitions...;-)
Alex

[Ilias Lazaridis]

Greg Stein wrote:

Guido would acknowledge a query, but never announce it. That's not his
style.

This should have a positive impact on Python. His job description has a
*very* significant portion of his time dedicated specifically to
working on Python. (much more than his previous "one day a week" jobs
have given him)

Doeas anyone at google realize the threat?

Mr. van Rossum should have 100% of his time for working on Python at
least for around 3 to 6 months.

50% for working on it (whilst simply having fun, as he should)

50% for _decoupling_ the strong-dependency of the python-development
from his person, thus python-evolution is ensured. This would involve to
clarify, document and to communicate the need to the community (which
seems to partially have a strong dependency, too).

..

--
http://lazaridis.com

[Alex Martelli]

Bengt Richter <bo**@oz.net> wrote:

On Thu, 22 Dec 2005 09:07:26 -0800, al***@mail.comcast.net (Alex Martelli)
wrote:

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;-).

So is google about to determine how many luminaries can fit on the head of
a project? ;-) Seriously, if you heavies do sometimes work on the same
project, it would be interesting to know what modes of co-operation you
tend to adopt.

Google's official position (per the article Hal Varian and Eric Schmidt
wrote recently) is that we are a "consensus-oriented culture". I _have_
worked in companies with consensus-oriented cultures, such as IBM in the
'80s (where it sometimes paralized everything, since one manager's
"non-concur" was enough to block progress on a project), and I would
respectfully disagree (on this point only -- the rest of their article
is quite consonant with my personal experiences) with our beloved leader
and our most excellent advisor. I would say we're a *results-oriented*
corporate culture... sometimes egos may get bruised, but we're all
supposed to have small-enough, resilient-enough egos to survive and
remain happy and productive anyway;-). Check the xooglers' blog for
others' opinions...
Alex

[Alex Martelli]

rbt <rb*@athop1.ath.vt.edu> wrote:
...

His founder, Mark Shuttleworth, is a python fan.

Aren't most all intelligent people Python fans?

No: I know many intelligent people who are not Python fans, ranging from
the Perl crowd (lot of great, bright people who however prefer Perl to
Python) to Ruby fans, from the C++ intelligentsia to the Java
in-crowd... hard to explain, for sure, but, there you are!
Alex

[Alex Martelli]

Bugs <do**@spam.me> wrote:

So when *is* someone (either Guido himself or Google) going to
officially announce that Guido has moved to Google? If at all?
I don't think any official announcement is planned.
Also, it would be nice to know from Guido's perspective what, if any at
all, impact this will have on Python?
I'll leave this to Guido to answer, if he wants to.
Maybe here? http://www.artima.com/weblogs/index.jsp?blogger=guido Is
this Guido's official blog?

I believe so, yes.
Alex

[Anand]

> It's like having James Bond as your very own personal body guard ;)

That is such a nice quote that I am going to put it in my email
signature ! :)

-Anand

[bearophileHUGS]

This topic is discussed on Slashdot too:
http://slashdot.org/articles/05/12/2....shtml?tid=217

There are some interesting comments, for example from curious Java or
Perl programmers, etc.
Some of them can probably appreciate this:
http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/typecheck

Among the noise there is some signal too, there are lists of some
problems of Python. Taking some of those things seriously can be
useful, I think.

Bye,
bearophile

[Nicola Musatti]

Cameron Laird wrote:

In article <11**********************@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups .com>,
Nicola Musatti <ni************@gmail.com> wrote:
.

Ah, the closed source days! Back then you could just buy the company
and be done with it. Now you have to chase developers one by one all
over the world... ;-) .
You propellor-heads (I write that in all fondness, Nicola) are
all laughing, but I'm certain that the right elaboration of
that proposition could make it into the *Harvard Business Review*
(or *IBM Systems Journal*, which seems to have tilted irreversibly
in that direction).

I was only half joking, actually. Compare Python to Delphi. If a
company wanted to acquire control over Delphi, they'd try and buy
Borland; to acquire control over Python what are they to do? Well,
hiring Guido and Alex is probably a step in the right direction ;-) but
would it be enough? Programming languages are not the best example, but
if you change it to Mozilla and Opera my argument makes more sense.
Actually, there's already a considerable literature on how pro-
grammers are like other nasty professionals in exhibiting more
loyalty to their community than to their employers. Generalize
as desired.

Well, it's still better than PHB's who, in my experience, are only
loyal to themselves and in general have more power to put other
people's jobs at risk than programmers.

Cheers,
Nicola Musatti

[elegans]

Of the three languages, Java, C# and Python, Python is my pet. c# is
very 90tyish and VS is showing it's age reminding me of Borland's
old c++ IDE.
Python represents the new direction in program language development and
has the needed flexibility.
I look forward to Google making Python, or it's sister into the next
industry standard. With 30 years of programming behind me, I have
always been fascinated by the gap between practice, wisdom and formal
programming language development, Python has narrowed the gap better
than most.

[Bengt Richter]

On 22 Dec 2005 23:06:43 -0800, "Anand" <ab******@gmail.com> wrote:

My newsreader automatically (and configurably) generates the above line.
Has a new reader come into frequent use that by default does not?
ISTM that I've seen a lot of unattributed quotes posted recently.

It's like having James Bond as your very own personal body guard ;)

That is such a nice quote that I am going to put it in my email
signature ! :)

-Anand

Maybe look into fixing the above problem while you're at it?

Regards,
Bengt Richter

[rbt]

Anand wrote:

It's like having James Bond as your very own personal body guard ;)

That is such a nice quote that I am going to put it in my email
signature ! :)

-Anand

Go right ahead. Perhaps we should do one for Perl too:

It's like having King Kong as your very own personal body guard ;)

[David E. Konerding DSD staff]

In article <11*********************@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups. com>, Greg Stein wrote:

Guido would acknowledge a query, but never announce it. That's not his
style.

This should have a positive impact on Python. His job description has a
*very* significant portion of his time dedicated specifically to
working on Python. (much more than his previous "one day a week" jobs
have given him)

Well, given that he's going to be spending his 80% time working on python,
it makes one wonder how he'll be spending his 20% time :-)

Dave

[Alex Martelli]

Nicola Musatti <ni************@gmail.com> wrote:
...

Ah, the closed source days! Back then you could just buy the company
and be done with it. Now you have to chase developers one by one all
over the world... ;-)

.
You propellor-heads (I write that in all fondness, Nicola) are
all laughing, but I'm certain that the right elaboration of
that proposition could make it into the *Harvard Business Review*
(or *IBM Systems Journal*, which seems to have tilted irreversibly
in that direction).

I was only half joking, actually. Compare Python to Delphi. If a
company wanted to acquire control over Delphi, they'd try and buy
Borland; to acquire control over Python what are they to do? Well,
hiring Guido and Alex is probably a step in the right direction ;-) but
would it be enough? Programming languages are not the best example, but
if you change it to Mozilla and Opera my argument makes more sense.

Not a bad point at all, although perhaps not entirely congruent to open
source: hiring key developers has always been a possibility (net of
non-compete agreements, but I'm told California doesn't like those).
E.g., Microsoft chose to hire Anders Hejlsberg away from Borland (to
develop J++, the WFC, and later C# and other key parts of dotNet) rather
than buying Borland and adapting Delphi; while acquiring companies is
often also a possibility (e.g., Novell chose to buy SuSE GmbH, rather
than trying to hire specific people off it, despite SuSE's roots in open
source and free software).
Alex

[Luis M. González]

rbt wrote:

Go right ahead. Perhaps we should do one for Perl too:

It's like having King Kong as your very own personal body guard ;)

Good analogy:
You know, they call Perl the "eight-hundred-pound gorilla" of scripting
languages.
Although most of the time, it would be a a very unsuitable body guard
(can't get into a car, into a plane, go to a party, etc..).

OTHOH James Bond is always perfect. He would sleep with your wife
though...

[Steve Holden]

Alex Martelli wrote:

Nicola Musatti <ni************@gmail.com> wrote:
...

Ah, the closed source days! Back then you could just buy the company
and be done with it. Now you have to chase developers one by one all
over the world... ;-)

.
You propellor-heads (I write that in all fondness, Nicola) are
all laughing, but I'm certain that the right elaboration of
that proposition could make it into the *Harvard Business Review*
(or *IBM Systems Journal*, which seems to have tilted irreversibly
in that direction).

I was only half joking, actually. Compare Python to Delphi. If a
company wanted to acquire control over Delphi, they'd try and buy
Borland; to acquire control over Python what are they to do? Well,
hiring Guido and Alex is probably a step in the right direction ;-) but
would it be enough? Programming languages are not the best example, but
if you change it to Mozilla and Opera my argument makes more sense.

Not a bad point at all, although perhaps not entirely congruent to open
source: hiring key developers has always been a possibility (net of
non-compete agreements, but I'm told California doesn't like those).
E.g., Microsoft chose to hire Anders Hejlsberg away from Borland (to
develop J++, the WFC, and later C# and other key parts of dotNet) rather
than buying Borland and adapting Delphi; while acquiring companies is
often also a possibility (e.g., Novell chose to buy SuSE GmbH, rather
than trying to hire specific people off it, despite SuSE's roots in open
source and free software).

The essential difference, it seems to me, is that buying the company
gets you control over the company's proprietary technologies, whereas
hiring the developer only gets you access to the development skills of
the people who've been involved open source developments.

The open source projects remain outwith the control of the company; I
don't expect Google's employment of Guido to have a significant effect
on the development directions for Python. I'm happy to say I *do* expect
Python's development rate to improve hereafter.

I'm also happy that Google are a significant and public supporter of the
Python Software Foundation through (among other things) their sponsor
membership of the Foundation, and their sponsorship of PyCon.

regards
Steve
--
Steve Holden [phone] [phone]
Holden Web LLC www.holdenweb.com
PyCon TX 2006 www.python.org/pycon/

[rbt]

Luis M. González wrote:

rbt wrote:

Go right ahead. Perhaps we should do one for Perl too:

It's like having King Kong as your very own personal body guard ;)

Good analogy:
You know, they call Perl the "eight-hundred-pound gorilla" of scripting
languages.

Absolutely. It's big, hairy, smelly, a bit dense at times and always
difficult to communicate with, but by god it gets the job done albeit in
a messy sort of way ;)