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)
Python is a language that empowers people.
I believe in the power of collaboration.
The future of Python is bright.
I'm a firm believer in the principle of least astonishment.
Python is a language that's fun to use.
The most important thing is to write code that works.
Python is a language that's easy to teach.
I'm a big fan of duck typing.
The beauty of Python is its simplicity.
Python is a language that's built for the long term.
Python is a language that doesn't take itself too seriously.
I wanted a language that was easy to read and write, like English.
Code is read much more often than it is written.
The joy of coding is in the elegance of the solution.
Python's philosophy is to be simple and explicit.
Life is too short to code in C.
Open source is the future of software development.
I created Python because I needed a better tool for my work.
Batteries included means you don't reinvent the wheel.
Programming should be fun, not a chore.
Contemporaries of Guido van Rossum
Other Computer Sciences born within 50 years of Guido van Rossum (1956).