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<p class='source'>Guido van Rossum, 6 Dec 1991</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q8'>The details of that silly code are
irrelevant.</p>
<p class='source'>Tim Peters, 4 Mar 1992</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q9'>Frankly, I'd rather not try to compete
with Perl in the areas where Perl is best -- it's a battle that's
impossible to win, and I don't think it is a good idea to strive
for the number of obscure options and shortcuts that Perl has
acquired through the years.</p>
<p class='source'>Guido van Rossum, 7 Jul 1992</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q10'>Python is a truly wonderful language.
When somebody comes up with a good idea it takes about 1 minute and
five lines to program something that almost does what you want.
Then it takes only an hour to extend the script to 300 lines, after
which it still does almost what you want.</p>
<p class='source'>Jack Jansen, 8 Jul 1992</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q11'>If you have a browser from CERN's WWW
project (World-Wide Web, a distributed hypertext system) you can
browse a WWW hypertext version of the manual...</p>
<p class='source'>Guido van Rossum, 19 Nov 1992 [First mention of
the Web on python-list.]</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q12'>Just a success note for Guido and the
list: Python 0.9.9, stdwin, readline, gmp, and md5 all go up on
linux 0.99 pl11 without much problems.</p>
<p class='source'>Allan Bailey, 2 Aug 1993 [First mention of Linux
on python-list.]</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q13'>Rule: "You shouldn't have to open up
a black box and take it apart to find out you've been pushing the
wrong buttons!" Corollary: "Every black box should have at least
TWO blinking lights: "Paper Jam" and "Service Required" (or
equivalent)."</p>
<p class='source'>Steven D. Majewski, 9 Sep 1993</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q14'>We've been through a couple of syntax
changes, but I have sort of assumed that by the time we get to
version 1.0 release, the language, (if not the implementation) will
essentially be stable.</p>
<p class='source'>Steven D. Majewski, 14 Sep 1993</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q15'>"Python tricks" is a tough one, cuz
the language is so clean. E.g., C makes an art of confusing
pointers with arrays and strings, which leads to lotsa neat pointer
tricks; APL mistakes everything for an array, leading to neat
one-liners; and Perl confuses everything period, making each line a
joyous adventure &lt;wink&gt;.</p>
<p class='source'>Tim Peters, 16 Sep 1993</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q16'>I've seen Python criticized as "ugly"
precisely because it <em>doesn't</em> have a trick-based view of
the world. In many ways, it's a dull language, borrowing solid old
concepts from many other languages &amp; styles: boring syntax,
unsurprising semantics, few automatic coercions, etc etc. But
that's one of the things I like about it.</p>
<p class='source'>Tim Peters, 16 Sep 1993</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q17'>One of the things that makes it
interesting, is exactly how much Guido has managed to exploit that
<em>one</em> implementation trick of 'namespaces'.</p>
<p class='source'>Steven D. Majewski, 17 Sep 1993</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q18'>Anyone familiar with Modula-3 should
appreciate the difference between a layered approach, with generic
Rd/Wr types, and the Python 'C with foam padding' approach.</p>
<p class='source'>John Redford, 24 Nov 1993</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q19'>People simply will not agree on what
should and shouldn't be "an error", and once exception-handling
mechanisms are introduced to give people a choice, they will far
less agree on what to do with them.</p>
<p class='source'>Tim Peters, 17 Dec 1993</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q20'>Note that because of its semantics,
'del' <em>can't</em> be a function: "del a" deletes 'a' from the
current namespace. A function can't delete something from the
calling namespace (except when written by Steve Majewski :-).</p>
<p class='source'>Guido van Rossum, 1 Aug 1994</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q21'>I don't know a lot about this
artificial life stuff -- but I'm suspicious of anything Newsweek
gets goofy about -- and I suspect its primary use is as another
money extraction tool to be applied by ai labs to the department of
defense (and more power to 'em). Nevertheless in wondering why free software is
so good these days it occurred to me that the propagation of free
software is one gigantic artificial life evolution experiment, but
the metaphor isn't perfect. Programs are thrown out into the harsh
environment, and the bad ones die. The good ones adapt rapidly and
become very robust in short order. The only problem with the metaphor is that the
process isn't random at all. Python <em>chooses</em> to include
Tk's genes; Linux decides to make itself more suitable for
symbiosis with X, etcetera. Free software is artificial life, but
better.</p>
<p class='source'>Aaron Watters, 29 Sep 1994</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q22'>I claim complete innocence and
ignorance! It must have been Tim. I wouldn't know a Trondheim
Hammer if it fell on my foot!</p>
<p class='source'>Steve Majewski, 10 Jan 1995</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q23'>(Aieee! Yet another thing on my TODO
pile!)</p>
<p class='source'>A.M. Kuchling, 10 Jan 1995</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q24'>[After someone wrote "...assignment
capability, a la djikstra"] Ehh, the poor old man's name is
Dijkstra. I should know, "ij" is a well known digraph in the Dutch
language. And before someone asks the obvious: his famous "P and V"
names for semaphores are derived for the Dutch words "Passeer" and
"Verlaat", or "Pass" and "Leave". And no, I haven't met him
(although he did work at CWI back in the fifties when it was
called, as it should still be today, Mathematical Centre). he
currently lives in Austin, Texas I believe. (While we're at it...
does anybody remember the Dijkstra font for Macintoshes? It was a
scanned version of his handwriting. I believe Luca Cardelli scanned
it -- the author of Obliq, a somewhat Python-like distributed
language built on Modula-3. I could go on forever... :-)</p>
<p class='source'>Guido van Rossum, 19 Jan 1995</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q25'>As always, I'll leave it to a
volunteer to experiment with this.</p>
<p class='source'>Guido van Rossum, 20 Jan 1995</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q26'>Non-masochists, please delete this
article NOW.</p>
<p class='source'>Aaron Watters, 20 Jan 1995</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q27'>If Perl weren't around, I'd probably
be using Python right now.</p>
<p class='source'>Tom Christiansen, in comp.lang.perl 2 Jun
1995</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q28'>GUI stuff is <em>supposed</em> to be
hard. It builds character.</p>
<p class='source'>Jim Ahlstrom, at one of the early Python
workshops</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q29'>&gt;VERY cool mod, Peter. I'll be
curious to see GvR's reaction to your syntax. Hm.</p>