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<p class='quotation' id='q1'>We will perhaps eventually be writing
only small modules which are identified by name as they are used to
build larger ones, so that devices like indentation, rather than
delimiters, might become feasible for expressing local structure in
the source language.</p>
<p class='source'>Donald E. Knuth, "Structured Programming with
goto Statements", Computing Surveys, Vol 6 No 4, Dec. 1974</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q315'>Python's syntax succeeds in
combining the mistakes of Lisp and Fortran. I do not construe that
as progress.</p>
<p class='source'>Larry Wall, May 12 2004</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q2'>Some rejected alternate names for
"Monty Python's Flying Circus": 1 2 3 / It's Them! / Arthur Megapode's Flying
Circus / The Horrible Earnest Megapode / The Panic Show / The
Plastic Mac Show / Ow! It's Colin Plint! / Vaseline Review /
Vaseline Parade / The Keen Show / Brian's Flying Circus / The Year
of the Stoat / Cynthia Fellatio's Flying Circus / Owl Stretching
Time / The Whizzo Easishow! (Guaranteed to last 1/2 hour! Money
back if not!)</p>
<p class='source'>From Kim "Howard" Johnson's <cite>Life Before and
After Monty Python</cite>. It's interesting to contemplate what
Python would have been called if one of these names had been
chosen.</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q3'>Anybody else on the list got an
opinion? Should I change the language or not?</p>
<p class='source'>Guido van Rossum, 28 Dec 1991</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q4'>
in-any-case-the-best-christmas-present-i-got-today!-ly y'rs -
tim</p>
<p class='source'>Tim Peters, 29 Dec 1991 [First occurrence of Tim
Peters's long-phrase-ly idiom.]</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q5'>
but-i'm-not-even-motivated-enough-to-finish-this-sig-</p>
<p class='source'>Tim Peters, 20 Dec 2000</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q6'>Ha -- you have done me the favor of
underestimating my ignorance <smile>.</p>
<p class='source'>Tim Peters, 30 Dec 1991</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q7'>I prefer (all things being equal)
regularity/orthogonality and logical syntax/semantics in a language
because there is less to have to remember. (Of course I
<em>know</em> all things are NEVER really equal!)</p>
<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 <wink>.</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 & 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'>>VERY cool mod, Peter. I'll be
curious to see GvR's reaction to your syntax. Hm.</p>
<p class='source'>Nick Seidenman and Guido van Rossum, 1 Aug
1996</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q30'>Python is an experiment in how much
freedom programmers need. Too much freedom and nobody can read
another's code; too little and expressiveness is endangered.</p>
<p class='source'>Guido van Rossum, 13 Aug 1996</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q31'>[On regression testing] Another
approach is to renounce all worldly goods and retreat to a
primitive cabin in Montana, where you can live a life of purity,
unpolluted by technological change. But now and then you can send
out little packages....</p>
<p class='source'>Aaron Watters</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q32'>Ah, you're a recent victim of
forceful evangelization. Write your own assert module, use it, and
come back in a few months to tell me whether it really caught 90%
of your bugs.</p>
<p class='source'>Guido van Rossum, 7 Feb 1997</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q33'>The larger scientific computing
centers generally have a "theory" division and a "actually uses the
computer" <wink> division. The theory division generally
boasts some excellent theoreticians and designers, while the other
division generally boasts some excellent physical scientists who
simply want to get their work done. In most labs I've seen, the two
divisions hate each others' guts (or, rarely, blissfully ignore
each other), & the politics is so thick you float on it even
after they embed your feet in cement blocks (hence even the simple
relief of death is denied you <wink>).</p>
<p class='source'>Tim Peters, 25 Mar 1997</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q34'>In one particular way the conflict is
fundamental & eternal: the "working scientists" generally
understand the hardware du jour perfectly, and passionately resent
any attempt to prevent them from fiddling with it directly -- while
the theory folks are forever inventing new ways to hide the
hardware du jour. That two groups can both be so right and so wrong
at the same time is my seventh proof for the existence of God
...</p>
<p class='source'>Tim Peters, 25 Mar 1997</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q35'>You're going to be in a minority -
you're coming to Python programming from a language which offers
you a lot more in the way of comfortable operations than Python,
instead of coming from medieval torture chambers like C or Fortran,
which offer so much less.</p>
<p class='source'>Andrew Mullhaupt, 26 Jun 1997</p>
<p class='quotation' id='q36'>...although Python uses an obsolete
approach to memory management, it is a <em>good</em> implementation
of that approach, as opposed to S, which uses a combination of bad
implementation and demented design decisions to arrive at what may
very well be the worst memory behavior of any actually useful
program.</p>
<p class='source'>Andrew Mullhaupt, 26 Jun 1997</p>
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