[Discuss] Guido van Rossum steps down

[Mike Small]

Kent Borg <kentborg at borg.org> writes:

> I think there is turmoil ahead for Python.

On the other hand I feel like Python has millions of users who don't
even know who Guido van Rossum is. I don't know if that's a sad or happy
thought for Python enthusiasts.

> In hindsight, they made a mistake to break compatibility in 3.0, yet

Is this bothering people very much? My impression was that the
adjustments tend to be minimal and that there are tools to
help. Granted, the person who told me this is very gung ho on the
language.

> didn't take the opportunity to fix the global interpreter lock that
> keeps Python from doing multithreading very well. Does not bode well.
>
> -kb, the Kent who is learning Rust, a language that does
> multithreading well.

People now expect good multithreading in scripting languages? Or have
the notational and/or library improvements in the C++ style languages
come along enough to where the scripting language conveniences don't
stand out as much? I always assumed Rust was sort of the next D (and
might top out around the same userbase size?) and wouldn't be considered
a substitute for the same kind of program where Perl, Python or Ruby
seemed to make sense. It's staticly typed and relatively verbose, right?
Big change from Python.

Well, let me know when it really is on the downward trajectory, so I can
finally get around to properly learning it. Work is sometimes easier to
find when you claim to know languages that were once very popular but
have since been damned with the "legacy" label.

-- 
Mike Small
smallm at sdf.org