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 Python is a high-level, general-purpose programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation. Python is dynamically-typed and garbage-collected. It supports multiple programming p ...

, 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 ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

, where he received a master's degree in mathematics and

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

from the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being ...

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 A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...

used in the "Python Powered" logo. Van Rossum lives in Belmont, 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 The (abbr. CWI; English: "National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science") is a research centre in the field of mathematics and theoretical computer science. It is part of the institutes organization of the Dutch Research C ...

(CWI), Van Rossum wrote and contributed a glob() routine to BSD

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, ...

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 The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) was an American lunar science mission in NASA's Discovery Program which used high-quality gravitational field mapping of the Moon to determine its interior structure. The two small spacecraf ...

, an early

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

written in Python, and engaged in discussions about the

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaS ...

standard. He has worked for various research institutes, including the

(CWI) in the Netherlands, the U.S.

National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical s ...

(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 Zope is a family of free and open-source web application servers written in Python, and their associated online community. Zope stands for "Z Object Publishing Environment", and was the first system using the now common object publishing methodol ...

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 Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

, where he spent half of his time developing the Python language. At Google, Van Rossum developed Mondrian, a web-based

code review Code review (sometimes referred to as peer review) is a software quality assurance activity in which one or several people check a program mainly by viewing and reading parts of its source code, and they do so after implementation or as an inter ...

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 o ...

. He named another related

software project Software project management is an art and science of planning and leading software projects. It is a sub-discipline of project management in which software projects are planned, implemented, monitored and controlled. History In the 1970s and 1 ...

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 Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

. 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

/ 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 ...

'')". 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 Al ...

had "spent a year with the SETL group at

NYU New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

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 of the Python programming language.

1999 "Computer Programming for Everybody" proposal

In 1999, Van Rossum submitted a funding proposal to

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the A ...

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 so ...

, 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 GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, cont ...

, the largest

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the ...

management website on the internet, second only to

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...

. 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 Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) is a non-commercial, volunteer-organized European event centered on free and open-source software development. It is aimed at developers and anyone interested in the free and ...

conference in

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

, Van Rossum received the 2001

Award for the Advancement of Free Software Free Software Foundation (FSF) grants two annual awards. Since 1998, FSF has granted the award for Advancement of Free Software and since 2005, also the Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit. Presentation ceremonies In 1999 it was pr ...

from the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed under copyleft ( ...

(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 ...

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 o ...

. * 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 Google App Engine (often referred to as GAE or simply App Engine) is a cloud computing platform as a service for developing and hosting web applications in Google-managed data centers. Applications are sandboxed and run across multiple servers ...

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 conside ...

.
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 o ...

{{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