Courtesy: Wikipedia
Guido van Rossum, a Dutch computer programmer, is widely acclaimed and known as the author of the Python programming language. He is also famous as a “Benevolent Dictator For Life” in the Python community for his active involvement in Python development processes, and taking fruitful decisions. In 2006, the Association for Computing Machinery recognized him as a Distinguished Engineer.
Guido was born in the Netherlands, where he spent his childhood. In 1982, he completed his master’s degree in mathematics and computer science from the University of Amsterdam. On completion of his studies, he worked for many different research institutes that include the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, Maryland, the Dutch Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), Amsterdam, and the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), Reston, Virginia. In 2005, Guido joined Google, where he wrote a web-based code-review tool for Google in Python. Currently, he works for Google full time and and devotes almost half of his time developing Python and guiding developers across open source communities.
According to Guido Rossum, the idea of Python came to his mind in December 1989 while he was looking for a “hobby programming project” to keep himself busy on Christmas holidays. Later, he scripted it in a way that it could appeal to Unix/C hackers.
Guido is an avid advocate of ‘open source’ projects and has been actively campaigning for the same for over a decade. Today, according to TIOBE Programming Community Index, Python is amongst top 10 most popular programming languages.
“I would guess that the decision to create a small special purpose language or use an existing general purpose language is one of the toughest decisions that anyone facing the need for a new language must make.” Guido van Rossum
Source of Info: Wikipedia
