Python has brought computer programming to a vast new audience
In December 1989 Guido van Rossum, a Dutch computer scientist, set himself a Christmas project. Irked by shortcomings in other programming languages, he wanted to build his own. His principles were simple. First, it should be easy to read. Rather than sprawling over line-endings and being broken up by a tangle of curly braces, each chunk would be surrounded with indented white space. Second, it should let users create their own packages of special-purpose coding modules, which could then be made available to others to form the basis of new programs. Third, he wanted a “short, unique and slightly mysterious” name. He therefore called it after Monty Python, a British comedy group. The package repository became known as the Cheese Shop.
Nearly 30 years after his Christmas invention, Mr Van Rossum resembles a technological version of the Monty Python character who accidentally became the Messiah in the film “Life of Brian”. “I certainly didn’t set out to create a language that was intended for mass consumption,” he explains. But in the past 12 months Google users in America have searched for Python more often than for Kim Kardashian, a reality-TV star. The rate of queries has trebled since 2010, while inquiries after other programming languages have been flat or declining.
The language’s popularity has grown not merely among professional developers — nearly 40% of whom use it, with a further 25% wishing to do so, according to Stack Overflow, a programming forum — but also with ordinary folk. Codecademy, a website that has taught 45m novices how to use various languages, says that by far the biggest increase in demand is from those wishing to learn Python.
See https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2018/07/21/python-has-brought-computer-programming-to-a-vast-new-audience
#python #programming
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In December 1989 Guido van Rossum, a Dutch computer scientist, set himself a Christmas project. Irked by shortcomings in other programming languages, he wanted to build his own. His principles were simple. First, it should be easy to read. Rather than sprawling over line-endings and being broken up by a tangle of curly braces, each chunk would be surrounded with indented white space. Second, it should let users create their own packages of special-purpose coding modules, which could then be made available to others to form the basis of new programs. Third, he wanted a “short, unique and slightly mysterious” name. He therefore called it after Monty Python, a British comedy group. The package repository became known as the Cheese Shop.
Nearly 30 years after his Christmas invention, Mr Van Rossum resembles a technological version of the Monty Python character who accidentally became the Messiah in the film “Life of Brian”. “I certainly didn’t set out to create a language that was intended for mass consumption,” he explains. But in the past 12 months Google users in America have searched for Python more often than for Kim Kardashian, a reality-TV star. The rate of queries has trebled since 2010, while inquiries after other programming languages have been flat or declining.
The language’s popularity has grown not merely among professional developers — nearly 40% of whom use it, with a further 25% wishing to do so, according to Stack Overflow, a programming forum — but also with ordinary folk. Codecademy, a website that has taught 45m novices how to use various languages, says that by far the biggest increase in demand is from those wishing to learn Python.
See https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2018/07/21/python-has-brought-computer-programming-to-a-vast-new-audience
#python #programming
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Python has brought computer programming to a vast new audience - Programming languages |
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