Guido van Rossum (; born 31 January 1956) is a Dutch

programmer A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

best known as the creator of the Python programming language, for which he was the "

benevolent dictator for life Benevolent dictator for life (BDFL) is a title given to a small number of open-source software development leaders, typically project founders who retain the final say in disputes or arguments within the community. The phrase originated in 1995 w ...

" (BDFL) until he stepped down from the position on 12 July 2018. He remained a member of the Python Steering Council through 2019, and withdrew from nominations for the 2020 election.

Life and education

Van Rossum was born and raised in the Netherlands, where he received a master's degree in mathematics and computer science from the University of Amsterdam in 1982. He received a bronze medal in 1974 in the International Mathematical Olympiad. He has a brother, Just van Rossum, who is a type designer and programmer who designed the typeface used in the "Python Powered" logo. Van Rossum lives in

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, California, with his wife, Kim Knapp, and their son. According to his home page and Dutch naming conventions, the " ''van''" in his name is capitalized when he is referred to by surname alone, but not when using his first and last name together.

Work

Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica

While working at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), Van Rossum wrote and contributed a glob() routine to

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berk ...

Unix in 1986 and helped develop the ABC programming language. He once stated, "I try to mention ABC's influence because I'm indebted to everything I learned during that project and to the people who worked on it." He also created Grail, an early web browser written in Python, and engaged in discussions about the HTML standard. He has worked for various research institutes, including the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in the Netherlands, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI). In May 2000, he left CNRI along with three other Python core developers to work for tech startup BeOpen.com, which subsequently collapsed by October of the same year. From late 2000 until 2003 he worked for Zope Corporation. In 2003 Van Rossum left Zope for Elemental Security. While there he worked on a custom programming language for the organization.

Google

From 2005 to December 2012, he worked at Google, where he spent half of his time developing the Python language. At Google, Van Rossum developed Mondrian, a web-based code review system written in Python and used within the company. He named the software after the Dutch painter

Piet Mondrian Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (), after 1906 known as Piet Mondrian (, also , ; 7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944), was a Dutch painter and art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He is known for being ...

. He named another related software project after Gerrit Rietveld, a Dutch designer. On 7 December 2012, Van Rossum left Google.

Dropbox

In January 2013, Van Rossum started working at the cloud file storage company Dropbox. In October 2019, Van Rossum left Dropbox and officially retired.

Microsoft

On 12 November 2020 Van Rossum announced that he was coming out of retirement to join the Developer Division at Microsoft. He currently holds the title Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft.

1989 Python

In December 1989, Van Rossum had been looking for a hobby' programming project that would keep imoccupied during the week around Christmas" as his office was closed when he decided to write an interpreter for a "new scripting language ehad been thinking about lately: a descendant of ABC that would appeal to Unix/ C hackers". He attributes choosing the name "Python" to "being in a slightly irreverent mood (and a big fan of ''

Monty Python's Flying Circus ''Monty Python's Flying Circus'' (also known as simply ''Monty Python'') is a British surreal sketch comedy series created by and starring Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam, who became known ...

'')". He has explained that Python's predecessor, ABC, was inspired by SETL, noting that ABC co-developer

Lambert Meertens Lambert Guillaume Louis Théodore Meertens or L.G.L.T. Meertens (born 10 May 1944, in Amsterdam) is a Dutch computer scientist and professor. , he is a researcher at the Kestrel Institute, a nonprofit computer science research center in Palo Alt ...

had "spent a year with the SETL group at NYU before coming up with the final ABC design". On 12 July 2018, Van Rossum announced that he would be stepping down from the position of

BDFL Benevolent dictator for life (BDFL) is a title given to a small number of open-source software development leaders, typically project founders who retain the final say in disputes or arguments within the community. The phrase originated in 1995 ...

of the Python programming language.

1999 "Computer Programming for Everybody" proposal

In 1999, Van Rossum submitted a funding proposal to DARPA called "Computer Programming for Everybody", in which he further defined his goals for Python: * An easy and intuitive language just as powerful as major competitors *

Open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

, so anyone can contribute to its development * Code that is as understandable as plain English * Suitability for everyday tasks, allowing for short development times In 2019, Python became the second most popular language on GitHub, the largest source code management website on the internet, second only to JavaScript. According to a programming language popularity survey it is consistently among the top 10 most mentioned languages in job postings. Furthermore, Python has been among the 10 most popular programming languages every year since 2004 according to the TIOBE Programming Community Index and got the number one spot on the index in October 2021.

Awards

* At the 2002 FOSDEM conference in Brussels, Van Rossum received the 2001 Award for the Advancement of Free Software from the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for his work on Python. * In May 2003, he received a

NLUUG NLUUG (formerly known as The Netherlands Local Unix User Group) is an association of professional UNIX / Linux users in the Netherlands. The group aims to increase and extend the awareness and use of Open Standards (including UNIX) and similar op ...

Award. * In 2006, he was recognized as a Distinguished Engineer by the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

. * In 2018, he was made a Fellow of the

Computer History museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact on ...

. * In 2019, he was awarded the honorary title of Dijkstra Fellow by CWI.

References

Computerworld ''Computerworld'' (abbreviated as CW) is an ongoing decades old professional publication which in 2014 "went digital." Its audience is information technology (IT) and business technology professionals, and is available via a publication website ...

* Guido van Rossu
Run your web applications on Google's infrastructure
— Google App Engine technical talk at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

.
video archive
*

Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact on ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rossum, Guido van 1956 births Computer programmers Dutch computer programmers Dutch computer scientists Dutch emigrants to the United States Free software programmers Google employees Living people Members of the Open Source Initiative board of directors Microsoft employees People from Belmont, California People from Haarlem Programming language designers Python (programming language) people University of Amsterdam alumni Dutch software engineers