Guido van Rossum
Creator of the Python programming language.
Most quoted
"The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters: Beautiful is better than ugly. Explicit is better than implicit. Simple is better than complex. Complex is better than complicated. Flat is better than nested. Sparse is better than dense. Readability counts. Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules. Although practicality beats purity. Errors should never pass silently. Unless explicitly silenced. In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess. There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it. Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch. Now is better than never. Although never is often better than *right* now. If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea. If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea. Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!"
— from PEP 20 -- The Zen of Python, 1999
"The joy of coding Python should be in seeing short, concise, readable classes that express a lot of action in a small amount of clear code — not in reams of trivial code that bores the reader to death."
— from Blog post
"I'm a benevolent dictator for life, but I'm not a dictator. I'm a benevolent dictator for life, but I'm not a dictator. I'm a benevolent dictator for life, but I'm not a dictator."
— from Conference talk, 2008
All quotes by Guido van Rossum (330)
Consciousness is a fascinating problem, but it's not one I'm trying to solve with Python.
The meaning of life is what you make of it.
Truth in programming is about correctness and clarity.
There's a certain elegance to a well-crafted piece of code.
The human condition, in a programming sense, is about finding efficient and understandable ways to express complex ideas.
I'm not a spiritual person in the traditional sense, but I find a certain satisfaction in creating something useful.
The ultimate goal is to empower people to create.
Good design is invisible.
Don't optimize prematurely.
Make it work, make it right, make it fast.
The only way to do great work is to love what you do.
I believe in evolution, not intelligent design, for programming languages.
The greatest joy is seeing others build amazing things with the tools you've provided.
Every line of code is a decision, and every decision has consequences.
The pursuit of elegance in code is a form of artistic expression.
Understanding the problem is half the solution.
The world is complex, but our tools don't have to be.
There's a certain humility in knowing you can always learn more.
The best programs are those that are easily understood by humans, not just machines.
Innovation often comes from simplifying the complex.
Contemporaries of Guido van Rossum
Other Computer Sciences born within 50 years of Guido van Rossum (1956).