Guido van Rossum (; born 31 January 1956) is a Dutch

programmer A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles Software development, ''software developer'' and Software engineering, ''software engineer' ...

. He is the creator of the

Python programming language Python is a high-level, general-purpose programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation. Python is dynamically type-checked and garbage-collected. It supports multiple prog ...

, for which he was the " benevolent dictator for life" (BDFL) until he stepped down from the position on 12 July 2018. He remained a member of the Python Steering Council through 2019, and withdrew from nominations for the 2020 election.

Life and education

Van Rossum was born and raised in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

, where he received a master's degree in mathematics and

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

from the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, ) is a public university, public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Established in 1632 by municipal authorities, it is the fourth-oldest academic institution in the Netherlan ...

in 1982. He received a bronze medal in 1974 in the International Mathematical Olympiad. He has a brother, Just van Rossum, who is a

type designer Type design is the art and process of designing typefaces. This involves drawing each letterform using a consistent style. The basic concepts and design variables are described below. A typeface differs from other modes of graphic production su ...

and programmer who designed the

typeface A typeface (or font family) is a design of Letter (alphabet), letters, Numerical digit, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, ...

used in the "Python Powered" logo. Van Rossum lives in Belmont, California, with his wife, Kim Knapp, and their son.

Work

Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica

While working at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), Van Rossum wrote and contributed a glob() routine to

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

in 1986 and helped develop the ABC programming language. He once stated, "I try to mention ABC's influence because I'm indebted to everything I learned during that project and to the people who worked on it." He also created Grail, an early

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

written in Python, and engaged in discussions about the

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

standard. He has worked for various research institutes, including the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in the Netherlands, the U.S.

National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into Outline of p ...

(NIST), and the

Corporation for National Research Initiatives The Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), based in Reston, Virginia, is a non-profit organization founded in 1986 by Bob Kahn, Robert E. Kahn as an "activities center around strategic development of network-based information technol ...

(CNRI). In May 2000, he left CNRI along with three other Python core developers to work for tech startup BeOpen.com, which subsequently collapsed by October of the same year. From late 2000 until 2003 he worked for

Zope Zope is a family of free and open-source software, free and open-source World Wide Web, web application servers written in Python (programming language), Python, and their associated online community. Zope stands for "Z Object Publishing Environm ...

Corporation. In 2003 Van Rossum left Zope for Elemental Security. While there he worked on a custom programming language for the organization.

Google

From 2005 to December 2012, Van Rossum worked at

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

, where he spent half of his time developing the Python language. At Google, he developed Mondrian, a web-based

code review Code review (sometimes referred to as peer review) is a software quality assurance activity in which one or more people examine the source code of a computer program, either after implementation or during the development process. The persons perf ...

system written in Python and used within the company. He named the software after the Dutch painter

Piet Mondrian Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (; 7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944), known after 1911 as Piet Mondrian (, , ), was a Dutch Painting, painter and Theory of art, art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He w ...

. He named Rietveld, another related software project, after Gerrit Rietveld, a Dutch designer. On 7 December 2012, Van Rossum left Google.

Dropbox

In January 2013, Van Rossum started working at the cloud file storage company

Dropbox Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and Client (computing), client software. Dropbox w ...

. In October 2019, Van Rossum left Dropbox and officially retired.

Microsoft

On 12 November 2020 Van Rossum announced that he was coming out of retirement to join the Developer Division at

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

. He currently holds the title Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft.

Python

In December 1989, Van Rossum had been looking for a hobby' programming project that would keep imoccupied during the week around Christmas" as his office was closed when he decided to write an interpreter for a "new scripting language ehad been thinking about lately: a descendant of ABC that would appeal to

/ C hackers". He chose the name Python for his programming language not because of the snake type but the comedy series ''

Monty Python's Flying Circus ''Monty Python's Flying Circus'' (also known as simply ''Monty Python'') is a British surreal humour, surreal sketch comedy series created by and starring Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Terry Gilliam, w ...

''. He has explained that Python's predecessor, ABC, was inspired by SETL, noting that ABC co-developer Lambert Meertens had "spent a year with the SETL group at NYU before coming up with the final ABC design". On 12 July 2018, Van Rossum announced that he would be stepping down from the position of benevolent dictator for life of the Python programming language.

"Computer Programming for Everybody" proposal

In 1999, Van Rossum submitted a funding proposal to the

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adva ...

(DARPA) called "Computer Programming for Everybody", in which he further defined his goals for Python: * An easy and intuitive language just as powerful as major competitors *

Open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

, so anyone can contribute to its development * Code that is as understandable as plain English * Suitability for everyday tasks, allowing for short development times In 2019, Python became the second most popular language on

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

, the largest

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

management website on the internet, after

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

. In 2024 Python became the most used language on

, overtaking

after a 10-year run as the most used language. According to a programming language popularity survey it is consistently among the top 10 most mentioned languages in job postings. Furthermore, Python has been among the 10 most popular programming languages every year since 2004 according to the TIOBE Programming Community Index and got the number one spot on the index in October 2021.

Awards

* At the 2002

FOSDEM Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) is an annual software engineering conference. It is non-commercial and volunteer-organized with a focus on free and open-source software. Initiated in 2000, it is usually held d ...

conference in

Brussels Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...

, Van Rossum received the 2001

Award for the Advancement of Free Software The Free Software Foundation (FSF) grants two annual awards. Since 1998, FSF has granted the award for Advancement of Free Software and since 2005, also the Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit. Presentation ceremonies In 1999 the a ...

from the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985. The organisation supports the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...

(FSF) for his work on Python. * In May 2003, he received a NLUUG Award. * In 2006, he was recognized as a Distinguished Engineer by the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

. * In 2018, he was made a Fellow of the

Computer History museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a computer museum in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the Information Age, and explores the Digital Revolution, computing revolution and its impact ...

. * In 2019, he was awarded the honorary title of Dijkstra Fellow by CWI. * In 2023, he was awarded the C&C Prize by NEC Corporation for developing the Python programming language.

References

Computerworld ''Computerworld'' (abbreviated as CW) is a computer magazine published since 1967 aimed at information technology (IT) and Business computing, business technology professionals. Original a print magazine, ''Computerworld'' published its final pr ...

* Guido van Rossu
Run your web applications on Google's infrastructure
— Google App Engine technical talk at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

.
video archive
*

Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a computer museum in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the Information Age, and explores the Digital Revolution, computing revolution and its impact ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rossum, Guido van 1956 births Computer programmers Dutch computer programmers Dutch computer scientists Dutch emigrants to the United States Free software programmers Google employees Living people Members of the Open Source Initiative board of directors Microsoft employees People from Belmont, California People from Haarlem Programming language designers Python (programming language) people University of Amsterdam alumni Dutch software engineers