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Guido van Rossum: Python and the Future of Programming – Lex Fridman Podcast

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Re: Guido van Rossum: Python and the Future of Programming – Lex Fridman Podcast

#4

Post by bmitc »

Does Python or van Rossum really have anything interesting to say on the future of programming? Python has libraries and lots of users and hype, and those are really its only outstanding "features". Python really does nothing interesting when I think of pushing the boundaries of programming.

Re: Guido van Rossum: Python and the Future of Programming – Lex Fridman Podcast

#6

Post by williamstein »

bmitc wrote: post #4

Does Python or van Rossum really have anything interesting to say on the future of programming? Python has libraries and lots of users and hype, and those are really its only outstanding "features". Python really does nothing interesting when I think of pushing the boundaries of programming.

And yet it is one of the top 10 most popular languages. There might be something to learn from the discipline and balance of not pushing the boundaries of programming too hard?

Re: Guido van Rossum: Python and the Future of Programming – Lex Fridman Podcast

#8

Post by doix »

bmitc wrote: post #4

Does Python or van Rossum really have anything interesting to say on the future of programming? Python has libraries and lots of users and hype, and those are really its only outstanding "features". Python really does nothing interesting when I think of pushing the boundaries of programming.

It's worth pointing out that Python is 30ish years old at this point.

It's "outstanding features" were creating a syntax that a lot of people can quickly grok (not just programmers) and the way they allowed for extensions to be written in C.

I believe it also popularized the concept of "there should be one obvious way of doing things", in stark contrast with Perl; "there's more than one way to skin a cat".

It's easy to look at this now and say that it's nothing interesting, because it already pushed the boundaries.

Re: Guido van Rossum: Python and the Future of Programming – Lex Fridman Podcast

#9

Post by tcmb »

doix wrote: post #8
bmitc wrote: post #4

Does Python or van Rossum really have anything interesting to say on the future of programming? Python has libraries and lots of users and hype, and those are really its only outstanding "features". Python really does nothing interesting when I think of pushing the boundaries of programming.

It's worth pointing out that Python is 30ish years old at this point. It's "outstanding features" were creating a syntax that a lot of people can quickly grok (not just programmers) and the way they allowed for extensions to be written in C. I believe it also popularized the concept of "there should be one obvious way of doing things", in stark contrast with Perl; "there's more than one way to skin a cat". It's easy…

> I believe it also popularized the concept of "there should be one obvious way of doing things"

It's one of the principles from the Zen of Python: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_of_Python#Principles

I agree with your comment, all of these taken together were a medium-sized revolution at the time. It's not for nothing that Python is the most popular language for teaching programming nowadays.

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