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)
Don't panic when the interpreter crashes.
Python scales from scripts to enterprises.
Meaning in life? Solving problems elegantly.
Namespaces are one honking great idea.
I stepped down to let Python evolve without me.
Code review saves projects from doom.
Python's garbage collection frees your mind.
Beauty in code is subjective, but strive for it.
The road to wisdom is paved with failed experiments.
Jokes in code comments lighten the load.
Python empowers the individual programmer.
Life's meaning? Building things that last.
Explicit is better than implicit.
I laughed when I first thought of 'import this'.
Sustainability in open source requires passion.
From ABC to Python: evolution in scripting.
Happiness comes from clean, working code.
The best languages adapt to users.
Python's success is collective, not mine alone.
Witty error messages make debugging fun.
Contemporaries of Guido van Rossum
Other Computer Sciences born within 50 years of Guido van Rossum (1956).