Oral History of Guido van Rossum, part 1

Interviewed by Hansen Hsu on 2018-02-01 in Mountain View, CA X8483.2018
© Computer History Museum

Guido van Rossum was born in 1956 in the Netherlands to parents belonging to the left-leaning Pacifist and Labor parties. He studied Mathematics at the University of Amsterdam, learned programming languages such as Pascal and ALGOL, and began programming on the university mainframe in the basement of the math building. While still a student, Van Rossum found a job at SARA (Stichting Academisch Rekencentrum Amsterdam) which provided computing services for the university. After graduating in 1982 he began a job at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (Center for Mathematics and Informatics, or CWI) working with Lambert Meertens on the ABC programming language, which inspired many of the later features of Python. The project failed due to lack of traction, and Van Rossum moved on to working on the Amoeba operating system with Sape Mullender. While on this project, Van Rossum began to feel that he could be much more productive if he could write code using an ABC-like language instead of C. Over Christmas break of 1989, he started work on a language which would combine the simplicity and flexibility of Unix shell scripting, the productivity of ABC, the power of C, and the extensibility and modularity of Modula-2. Wanting a name that was fun, irreverent and a nod to pop culture, Van Rossum named the language Python, after the British comedy series Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

Van Rossum explains how many of Python’s well-known features were derived from ABC, including its use of whitespace and its dynamic, object-oriented runtime. Its major departure is its extensibility through the use of modules, which has led to a large set of useful libraries. It is these libraries that Van Rossum credits for Python’s facility for rapid prototyping and its wide applicability to such wide ranging applications as web services, data science, machine learning, science, and education. Van Rossum also describes his efforts to open source Python, the early development of the Python community and its structure.

Lot number: X8483.2018
Catalog number: 102738720

[venkatreddy]

Great concept to have these luminaries in this field to watch and understand their background. Excellent idea to capture these phenomenal personalities and their life stories in their own words.

[climbeverest]

Interviewer is doing a great job, asking questions I might want answers for

[jonilarsen-haikarainen]

I have used many programming languages through the years. Both before and after I found Python. And Python is the only language, where it would be accurate to say that I love it.

[uweopfern]

Men i respect the guy so much i love him, i use python in career of software development, no current language that i love as python really, to Guido Van Rossum

[phyosithu]

Love you, the father of python, and thank you so much

[garad]

2:19:48 if you want to see guido drinking water

[FilipiVianna]

Great guy… great life history… I wish I would be able to click multiple thumbs up.

[rezakghazi]

I believe they are four people in computer history who changed the way we look at science. The first is "John Bakus", who invented Speedcoding and Fortran, the second two are "Brian Kernighan" and "Dennis Ritchie, " for creating the C programming language, and the fourth one is "Guido van Rossum." for inventing Python.
They created a beautiful world that made us love programming and keep going.

[AnthonyMcqueen]

As a Python Programmer this man is a inspiration to me in my work. His story helps me to create my own language to be in this elite group of founders.

- The man behind the Snake -

The only people who would dislike something like this don't know the programming world.

The story of a man who created the most powerful and popular programming languages on the planet.

[RayR]

Fascinating insight into programming languages.

[krunkle]

If only there were more three hour interview videos about programming languages. This isn't sarcasm. This was very engaging, but can also be played in the background.

[amirhosseinahmadi]

So much RESPECT for Mr. van Rossum.
By the way I think the interviewer was a little bit weird.

[KingBlobbyGoober]

This is the type of video YouTube puts on when I forget to turn of the video I use as background noise to go to sleep

[NiekBeukers]

Somehow i get the feeling i'm watching a very long Monty Python sketch sort of;-)

[PauloConstantino]

Please do a history with Ken Thompson!!

[ArumesYT]

Good interview, but you can tell the interviewer has a very American perspective. CHM use a kind of standard set of questions about parents, childhood and school etc. Those questions just don't fit well with older countries (like always asking where they originally come from) and the way Dutch society is organised. That's (one of the reasons, together with Guido's nedry. almost autistic character) why the interview has a pretty rough start because Guido doesn't have the long answers Hansen expects. I'm Dutch myself and recognise a lot of his answers, but it doesn't create the usual smooth, colorful conversation you see in other oral histories. That's just the way we are. 🙂

[samsungsarsamsungsar]

Where is playlist of "Oral History" series on channel?

[AdamWestish]

Finally making me decide to get back into python.

[truezulu]

Great interview. Everyone has their faults, although cowardice is especially appalling to me...

[TahaElshenawytube]

Hell yeah after only two hours the mind of the interviewer
cracked by Guido van and start repeated ( sort of ) a lot