Slashdot Log In
Guido Goes Google
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Dec 22, 2005 03:32 PM
from the golly-gee dept.
from the golly-gee dept.
revividus writes "It seems that Python creator Guido van Rossum has received an offer from Google, and accepted it. Here is also some confirmation."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
His name is Guido? (Score:2, Funny)
(http://extremecode.org/)
Re:His name is Guido? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.slashdot.org/)
However, could this be Google's move against Sun and Microsoft ?
Sun has Java
Microsoft has C#
It would be pretty logical that google would like to control something that is comparable to sun and microsoft's bigtime server languages. Python has moderately fast bytecode (google stuff could improve a lot here) and it's got a decent oop model and a threading api. i/o is also usable. i think zope fans can hype their favourite thing in the responding posts too.
i can't wait for the first version of GPython or Gython !
Re:His name is Guido? (Score:5, Informative)
Python vs. compiled Java and C (Score:5, Interesting)
I like weave but I am waiting to see what will come out of the PyPy [codespeak.net] project - the author is the one who wrote Psyco (the JIT compiler for Python).
Then there is Pyrex where Python can manipulate C data with language extensions, as opposed to weave where C code is inlined into the python code and Python data is manipulated in C.
It is true that as a scripting language Python is slower than (byte)compiled languages. But it is slower by a constant factor. In other words people would say "Your Python solution is 4x slower than my Java solution!". What this means though is that just by upgrading the hardware that Python runs on, one can reach the speed of execution of the compiled program. In other words Python on an Athlon 64 fx 57 might run faster than java bytecode on a 1Ghz Athlon, or might even run faster than C on a 100Mhz machine (I am just making these numbers up, maybe someone knows of some benchmarks?). The point is that application that required C 15-20 years ago can probably be re-written in Python now.
This doesn't mean they want to "control" Python (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Re:This doesn't mean they want to "control" Python (Score:4, Insightful)
PyPy: a Python implementation written in Python (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Thursday August 23, @11:40AM)
A very interesting project that aims to create a faster Python implementation is PyPy [codespeak.net], funded by the EU, by google (with Summer of Code) and by a lot of programmers that donate their own time.
Even the Psyco [sourceforge.net] guys say that the future is in PyPy!
Re:His name is Guido? (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft hasn't been asleep either when it comes to Python. They hired the original guy who worked on the Iron Python project http://www.ironpython.com/ [ironpython.com] which brought Python to
The latest updates on the Iron Python is right here
http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/workspace.asp
Re:His name is Guido? (Score:4, Informative)
Python's biggest problem from a performance perspective is that the language effectively guarantees operations on several internal objects (e.g. lists, dictionaries, etc) are atomic (from a multithreading point of view). This means that some kind of lock must be held when working with such objects. Because this is how most Python programs spend most of their time, Python usually just has a global lock for all such objects that threads hold whenever they aren't blocked. This means that multithreaded Python apps do not usually benefit from having multiprocessing systems. The obvious alternative (per-object locks acquired when necessary) doesn't seem to help, as it slows single-thread performance significantly.
I think this flaw means that Python cannot really compete with Java or C# on big server systems. And I don't see how to fix it, either, without breaking the beauty of the language.
that's it? (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Saturday October 01 2005, @03:15PM)
Re:that's it? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:that's it? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.philcrissman.com/)
Did you want me to say that Google was a search engine and that Python was a programming language?
Re:that's it? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/~anaesthetica/journal/ | Last Journal: Thursday August 30, @01:22PM)
"It seems that Python creator Guido van Rossum has received an offer from Google, and accepted it. Here is also some confirmation. Does this finally confirm that vi is better than emacs?"
or
"It seems that Python creator Guido van Rossum has received an offer from Google, and accepted it. Here is also some confirmation. Is this move calculated to counter Apple's move to Intel?"
See? It's not so hard.
Re:that's it? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.sff.net/people/Daniel.Dvorkin | Last Journal: Friday October 12, @01:42PM)
I love Python, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.blindmindseye.com/)
And of course if Google wanted to really screw with both Sun and Microsoft, especially Microsoft, they could create their own cross-platform web and gui toolkits and a free RAD GUI builder a la Visual Studio for Python. If they could create a Python framework on par with Swing or Windows Forms, there'd be quite a bit of wailing and gnashing of teeth in both camps
Re:I love Python, but... (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Thursday August 23, @11:40AM)
Good point. I think that Python [python.org] + wxPython [wxpython.org] + wxGlade [sf.net] is a very powerful combination for clean, fast and maintainable GUI development.
If you do GUIs I suggest to try these tools: they are simple and powerful (wxPython even contains additional classes that are not present in wxWidgets).
Re:I love Python, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually Python's interactive interpreter and class/method documentation strings work very well. Most times it's much nicer to simply be able to DO stuff and look up help at the same time rather than go sifting through some huge morass of automated docs.
Also, the next time you can do something in Java or
an offer from Google (Score:1, Funny)
Re:an offer from Google (Score:4, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
An offer you can't refuse
... especially when your name is Guido.
An assumption (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not saying that assumption is not true. It's just that he is a huge talent. If I had a gargantuan project to run, I'd hire him no matter what the language.
I wonder if the management types have figured out that anyone who can create and run a large successful open source project is a much better manager than the average MBA.
Re:An assumption (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they are most certainly hiring Guido to continue Python development. It would be a disaster for Python, and thus for Google, if they diverted his talent toward some random Google project.
Re:An assumption (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.lyra.org/)
In any case: yeah, we hired him because we want him to work on Python itself. And as John says later in this thread -- about half his time.
Python v. Perl (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/~Shadow%20Wrought/journal | Last Journal: Tuesday November 13, @09:27PM)
No, no, no, no! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.google.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday December 12 2006, @06:04PM)
Yes, I see a Google search for 'perl' [mtholyoke.edu] now has a transcript of Monty Python's Parrot sketch as the first hit.
Re:Python v. Perl (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.openhosting.com/)
Google's always been pretty open about heavy Python use. There is fairly interesting presentation by Greg Stein about Python at Goole here [pycon.org] (audio only).
The nerds are having revenge (Score:2)
http://sunsite.uakom.sk/sunworldonline/swol-02-19
Wow...! (Score:2)
(http://www.creimer.ws/ | Last Journal: Friday January 26 2007, @12:40PM)
One Liners... (Score:5, Funny)
We just love a guy that gets so wrapped up in his work!
We've got penguins, we've got pythons, and we've got a lemur with a minigun...this zoo rocks!
After hearing the report, Ballmer threw a Hissssy fit.
Someone reported a problem with a mouse at Google Central and the recruiter got to work on hiring the python guy.
With a keen eye on competition, Google is just trying to catch up to the number of reptiles employed by Microsoft.
Becoming the new Xerox Parc (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://suso.suso.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday March 09 2004, @12:03AM)
Re:Becoming the new Xerox Parc (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://tumbleweed.smugmug.com/)
Python was used in Google's first academic version (Score:2, Informative)
In order to scale to hundreds of millions of web pages, Google has a fast distributed crawling system. A single URLserver serves lists of URLs to a number of crawlers (we typically ran about 3). Both the URLserver and the crawlers are implemented in Python
http://www-db.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html [stanford.edu]
A way of returning a favor, perhaps?
Next Up.. (Score:1)
Google-Python Search Results (Score:1, Funny)
Google: No results found.
Search: Is there someone else up there we could talk to?
Google: No, now go away before I taunt you a second time.
Wikipedia entry? (Score:1, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guido_van_Rossum [wikipedia.org]
At first, I thought somebody was playing a prank.
Google and Python have always been friends (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Tuesday January 06 2004, @08:24AM)
Semi-Off-Topic Python vs. Perl discussion (Score:2, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/)
While Perl is still my sentimental favorite, I'm open-minded about programming languages, especially those that are as widely used as Python. I've never been able to really understand Python, though, because of its bizarre syntax. (insert Perl syntax joke here) It's always seemed easier to just do what I need to do in Perl, since I know it so well.
If I'm reasonably proficient in Perl, what would I gain by using Python instead? I'm not trying to troll here, I'm just wondering what I'm missing. If Google uses it internally it must have an advantage over other languages, but I've never not been able to do something in Perl if I really wanted to.
Re:Semi-Off-Topic Python vs. Perl discussion (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.gorzek.com/ | Last Journal: Friday December 23 2005, @04:34PM)
I still use perl for quick-and-dirty text-processing and so forth, but Python is excellent for creating scripts you want to be able to maintain later. The syntax is sparse (compared to most other languages), so there isn't as much code to maintain. I found most of my favorite perl features were also represented (foreach, regular expressions, etc.)
People who've never spent much time with Python will gripe about the whitespace. It was never an issue for me, and I've never had problems with it.
If you plan to do any significant object-oriented programming, Python is very good for that. For procedural programs, the only edge it has over perl is readability, due to the concise syntax.
One thing to keep in mind with Python, however, is that it does NOT convert between numbers and strings automatically, while perl does. It's no big deal to cast a number as a str() or cast a string as int(), but if you don't know about it beforehand, it will get you.
From what I understand, Python is also very nice for metaprogramming, but I've never used it for that. I have used it for quick command-line utilities, GUI apps (with wxPython), and game programming. The object-oriented features are really why I prefer it over perl. They are intuitive, and you have a lot of power over how the objects behave in various circumstances.
If you have any C# experience, I've found you can port C# code to Python with only minor (mostly cosmetic) changes. (This obviously excludes using libraries written for C#, though--I was referring to the syntax of the code itself as being easily ported.)
Sorry if this explanation wasn't technical enough. I was just trying to lay out the general reasons I found a move from perl to Python relatively painless.
Better article headline: (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.inthri.com/)
Dynamic Typing (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://pyscrabble.sf.net/)
Freaked out there for a second... (Score:1)
Then I realized it would be pretty cool to work for Google. Time to sharpen those Python skills...
Guido.. going.. going.. Gonkers... (Score:2, Interesting)
It might be nice to see some of the Guido python style [python.org] in Google's future software though.
Google on track to Monopoly (Score:1)
(http://www.cheesymovienight.com/)
Step 1: Undermine all current Monopolies with "Free" products paid for by advertising.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Monopoly!
complete conjecture (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.slashdot.org/)
AJAX is working for Google fairly well right now, but it's probably not an end-all answer. Javascript is fine for writing small apps, but it's not that great of a language. And even with the distance diminishing between browsers, it's still a pain to write cross-browser code. One of the great accomplishments I've seen of javascript (besides maps.google) is the FCK editor [fckeditor.net], but even that can be slow, and takes large amounts of memory.
Looking ahead, I suspect Google knows that Javascript will eventually have to dumped. M$ already has an answer, .net. They have their browser, and they can afford not to have to worry about being cross-platform.
In the end, the web browser is not a great for doing things besides browsing the web. On top of that, with EOLAs legal suit against embedded applications, full fledged internet apps seem to be the only way to go. If Google is to survive, they need the tools and framework in order to deploy such apps.
And in related news.... (Score:1)
The Zen of Python (Score:2, Informative)
The Zen of Python (by Tim Peters)
Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!
Easter Egg (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.poromenos.org/)
>>> import this
Garbage collection (Score:1)
1 down, 1 to go (Score:2)
(http://slashdot.org/)
New Windows screen saver (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.linicks.net/)
My plan to get hired by Google: (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.bigzaphod.org/)
Step 2) ????
Step 3) Profit!
Unfortunately I think my languages are just too powerful for Google, really. I'm not sure they can handle them. That must be why they haven't called me yet...
It has to be said (Score:1)
(http://jackshck.livejournal.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday August 10 2006, @04:15PM)
But seriously. Why is google hiring the head of python? It seems very interesting. The speculation that they are creating a language is an interesting idea. However it seems very unlikely in my opinion. I mean why create a new language?
Google is moving at a very rapid pace and I don't think it can sustain this level of activity for a very long time. But then I don't know what there management setup is like. If they have flattened it like a startup.
Lets see what happens.
The Google Brain-Drain (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm reminded of the Microsoft Research brain-drain from a few years ago, when everyone was paranoid about what MSR was doing to universities. They gobbled up dozens upon dozens of top academics, and then . . . well, we haven't heard much from them since. Google is now doing the same thing to the open source community, to who knows what effect.
Also Semi-Off-Topic: Python vs. Java (Score:1)
(http://backspaces.net/)
Specifically: What can a Java programmer do that a Python programmer cannot?
I suspect the answer lies in the libraries -- Java has standard GUIs and lots of libraries for doing damn near everything. But the verbosity! I cringe every time I start a new Java project.
I tried Python/Jyton for a bit and indeed did get used to the white space thing. The classes seemed weird beyond belief: __foobar__ just sucks as does explict self reference for all instance variables. But again, I suspect I can get used to it.
Anyhoo .. any insights into limits from a Java point of view?
Google strategy.... (Score:3, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday January 04 2006, @09:14PM)
while(stock > 400):
for company in buyoutlist:
company.purchase()
spend_money()
for phd in smart_people_list:
phd.hire()
release_cool_google_tool()
(might be syntax errors in this, I work with so many languages I get confused myself)
Good Thing (Score:1)
Reasons for this are obvious. (Score:2)
2. Google uses lots of python.
3. Google thinks best way to remain compatible.
4. Google hires Guido to find best way to make all Google python code compatible to future versions.
5. Guido announces changes to python.
Perhaps not exacly like this, but I think hiring Guido to google is going to stabilize python atleast that much that future versions of python won't break the entire python based code base of Google.
google goes SF ? (Score:2)
(http://www.hut.fi/u/tkyntola/index.html)
And we have a couple other ideas on how to help the open source
community. We're working on it!
Does that mean google will add a sourceforge like source managament to their arsenal?
Somehow I'm not surprised...
Wonder what the future plans are?
p2p system? IM service? ntp servers? anon ftp servers? mirror of the entire current net? internet2?
And now, the inevitable... (Score:1)
Remeber ALF, Bart? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The Power of The Media (Score:1)
Re:I'm sorry, but... (Score:1)
(http://v4.kazzuya.com/)
Re:The Power of The Media (Score:1)
(http://if-you-dont-smoke-you-still-die.com/)
Whom ever modded this off-topic has a near terminal lack of breadth of vision.
Re:I'm sorry, but... (Score:2)
(http://slashdot.org/)
You are late (Score:4, Informative)
Well... (Score:3, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Stupid nerds.
Well... Some Mothers do 'Ave 'Em.
Err, wait. (Score:2)
(http://www.poromenos.org/)