Guido at Google

[=?iso-8859-1?q?Luis_M._Gonz=E1lez?=]

Google is merely the new Microsoft and surely just as unethical
at its core.

And your spelling Goole is probably closer to the mark,
since it is merely the next ghoulish big company,
come to restrict our freedoms and blot out the sky.

I beg to disagree.
Google is what it is because it creates good and useful products which
everybody enjoy for free. For doing this, they hire the best guns and,
guess what?
These talented people have to eat, like you and me.
Do you expect them to work for free?
Every company needs to make money, otherwise they would die.
But there are many ways to make it, and I think they are as good and
ethical as they can be.

 

[bearophileHUGS]

This is interesting. With more Python time in Guido's hands maybe Py
3.0 is a bit closer...

I don't know if this is a silly idea:
A small part of the wealth of a modern state is probably determined by
the software it uses/produces, and a small part of this software is
open source or free. This free sofware is used by a lot of people, and
they probably use it to work too, etc.
For a modern government, paying a salary to few (20?) very good open
source programmers can make the whole society "earn" maybe 10 or more
times that money... (The money given from EU to PyPy can be an example
of this).

Bye,
bearophile

 

[Ilias Lazaridis]

Ilias Lazaridis wrote: [...]
[...]

Hi there, I wonder what comments you would have about XOTCL, or other
OO extensions for tcl, like snit, and dozens more. I looked at the
various scripting languages available to me and decided to go with
tcl as it seemed the most versatile. I can't find it on your page
though.
Regards.

I had myself a positive impression about TCL, but a negative one with
the community (and with the many OO extensions for TCL, which would be a
sub-evaluation):

[JAMLANG] - Comparative Evaluation - Draft Version
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_frm/thread/8791f3b541d976f5

If you like, you can fill in the evaluation based on tcl/XOTCL (which
would be published then).

http://lazaridis.com/case/lang/index.html

you can alternatively sent a text-file via email.

If you have further questions, please contact me with private email.

Thank you for your intrest.

Best Regards,

Ilias Lazaridis

..

 

[Robert Kern]

This is interesting. With more Python time in Guido's hands maybe Py
3.0 is a bit closer...

I don't know if this is a silly idea:
A small part of the wealth of a modern state is probably determined by
the software it uses/produces, and a small part of this software is
open source or free. This free sofware is used by a lot of people, and
they probably use it to work too, etc.
For a modern government, paying a salary to few (20?) very good open
source programmers can make the whole society "earn" maybe 10 or more
times that money... (The money given from EU to PyPy can be an example
of this).

No, it's not a silly idea. Dean Baker, the Co-Director the Center for Economic
and Policy Research, has proposed for the U.S. government to establish a
Software Developer's Corps. For $2 billion per year, it could fund about 20,000
developers to make open source software. Much of that software would be directly
usable by local, state, and federal governments and thus pay back some, all, or
more of the investment (Dean estimates more). In addition, the general public
also benefits directly.

http://www.cepr.net/publications/windows_2005_10.pdf

--
Robert Kern
(e-mail address removed)

"In the fields of hell where the grass grows high
Are the graves of dreams allowed to die."
-- Richard Harter

 

[Ilias Lazaridis]

Gary Herron wrote:



Nobody will ever know.

simply review this explanations:

http://lazaridis.com/core/index.html

some people have already understood this in the past.

Check the comp.lang.python/ruby/lisp/etc archives
for more.

evaluations will be listed here shortly:

http://lazaridis.com/core/eval/index.html

(if you find an itresting topic, please send the link)

</F>

..

 

[Ilias Lazaridis]

Thomas Wouters wrote:
[...]

thank you for your comments.

-

TAG.python.evolution.negate

..

 

[Alex Martelli]

Ah, the closed source days! Back then you could just buy the company
and be done with it. Now you have to chase developers one by one all
over the world... ;-)

Well, you can STILL buy the company -- eBay's bought Skipe (and a slice
of craigslist), Yahoo's bought delicious and flickr, we've bought
Keyhole (and a tiny slice of AOL)... just to mention recent and salient
acquisitions...;-)


Alex

 

[Ilias Lazaridis]

Guido would acknowledge a query, but never announce it. That's not his
style.

This should have a positive impact on Python. His job description has a
*very* significant portion of his time dedicated specifically to
working on Python. (much more than his previous "one day a week" jobs
have given him)

Doeas anyone at google realize the threat?

Mr. van Rossum should have 100% of his time for working on Python at
least for around 3 to 6 months.

50% for working on it (whilst simply having fun, as he should)

50% for _decoupling_ the strong-dependency of the python-development
from his person, thus python-evolution is ensured. This would involve to
clarify, document and to communicate the need to the community (which
seems to partially have a strong dependency, too).

..

 

[Alex Martelli]

So is google about to determine how many luminaries can fit on the head of
a project? ;-) Seriously, if you heavies do sometimes work on the same
project, it would be interesting to know what modes of co-operation you
tend to adopt.

Google's official position (per the article Hal Varian and Eric Schmidt
wrote recently) is that we are a "consensus-oriented culture". I _have_
worked in companies with consensus-oriented cultures, such as IBM in the
'80s (where it sometimes paralized everything, since one manager's
"non-concur" was enough to block progress on a project), and I would
respectfully disagree (on this point only -- the rest of their article
is quite consonant with my personal experiences) with our beloved leader
and our most excellent advisor. I would say we're a *results-oriented*
corporate culture... sometimes egos may get bruised, but we're all
supposed to have small-enough, resilient-enough egos to survive and
remain happy and productive anyway;-). Check the xooglers' blog for
others' opinions...


Alex

 

[Alex Martelli]

Aren't most all intelligent people Python fans?

No: I know many intelligent people who are not Python fans, ranging from
the Perl crowd (lot of great, bright people who however prefer Perl to
Python) to Ruby fans, from the C++ intelligentsia to the Java
in-crowd... hard to explain, for sure, but, there you are!


Alex

 

[Alex Martelli]

So when *is* someone (either Guido himself or Google) going to
officially announce that Guido has moved to Google? If at all?

I don't think any official announcement is planned.

Also, it would be nice to know from Guido's perspective what, if any at
all, impact this will have on Python?

I'll leave this to Guido to answer, if he wants to.

Maybe here? http://www.artima.com/weblogs/index.jsp?blogger=guido Is
this Guido's official blog?

I believe so, yes.


Alex

 

[Anand]

It's like having James Bond as your very own personal body guard

That is such a nice quote that I am going to put it in my email
signature !

-Anand

 

[bearophileHUGS]

This topic is discussed on Slashdot too:
http://slashdot.org/articles/05/12/22/1832226.shtml?tid=217

There are some interesting comments, for example from curious Java or
Perl programmers, etc.
Some of them can probably appreciate this:
http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/typecheck

Among the noise there is some signal too, there are lists of some
problems of Python. Taking some of those things seriously can be
useful, I think.

Bye,
bearophile

 

[Nicola Musatti]

.
You propellor-heads (I write that in all fondness, Nicola) are
all laughing, but I'm certain that the right elaboration of
that proposition could make it into the *Harvard Business Review*
(or *IBM Systems Journal*, which seems to have tilted irreversibly
in that direction).

I was only half joking, actually. Compare Python to Delphi. If a
company wanted to acquire control over Delphi, they'd try and buy
Borland; to acquire control over Python what are they to do? Well,
hiring Guido and Alex is probably a step in the right direction ;-) but
would it be enough? Programming languages are not the best example, but
if you change it to Mozilla and Opera my argument makes more sense.

Actually, there's already a considerable literature on how pro-
grammers are like other nasty professionals in exhibiting more
loyalty to their community than to their employers. Generalize
as desired.

Well, it's still better than PHB's who, in my experience, are only
loyal to themselves and in general have more power to put other
people's jobs at risk than programmers.

Cheers,
Nicola Musatti

 

[elegans]

Of the three languages, Java, C# and Python, Python is my pet. c# is
very 90tyish and VS is showing it's age reminding me of Borland's
old c++ IDE.
Python represents the new direction in program language development and
has the needed flexibility.
I look forward to Google making Python, or it's sister into the next
industry standard. With 30 years of programming behind me, I have
always been fascinated by the gap between practice, wisdom and formal
programming language development, Python has narrowed the gap better
than most.

 

[Bengt Richter]

My newsreader automatically (and configurably) generates the above line.
Has a new reader come into frequent use that by default does not?
ISTM that I've seen a lot of unattributed quotes posted recently.

That is such a nice quote that I am going to put it in my email
signature !

-Anand

Maybe look into fixing the above problem while you're at it?

Regards,
Bengt Richter

 

[rbt]

That is such a nice quote that I am going to put it in my email
signature !

-Anand

Go right ahead. Perhaps we should do one for Perl too:

It's like having King Kong as your very own personal body guard

 

[David E. Konerding DSD staff]

Guido would acknowledge a query, but never announce it. That's not his
style.

This should have a positive impact on Python. His job description has a
*very* significant portion of his time dedicated specifically to
working on Python. (much more than his previous "one day a week" jobs
have given him)

Well, given that he's going to be spending his 80% time working on python,
it makes one wonder how he'll be spending his 20% time

Dave

 

[Alex Martelli]

I was only half joking, actually. Compare Python to Delphi. If a
company wanted to acquire control over Delphi, they'd try and buy
Borland; to acquire control over Python what are they to do? Well,
hiring Guido and Alex is probably a step in the right direction ;-) but
would it be enough? Programming languages are not the best example, but
if you change it to Mozilla and Opera my argument makes more sense.

Not a bad point at all, although perhaps not entirely congruent to open
source: hiring key developers has always been a possibility (net of
non-compete agreements, but I'm told California doesn't like those).
E.g., Microsoft chose to hire Anders Hejlsberg away from Borland (to
develop J++, the WFC, and later C# and other key parts of dotNet) rather
than buying Borland and adapting Delphi; while acquiring companies is
often also a possibility (e.g., Novell chose to buy SuSE GmbH, rather
than trying to hire specific people off it, despite SuSE's roots in open
source and free software).


Alex

 

[=?iso-8859-1?q?Luis_M._Gonz=E1lez?=]

Go right ahead. Perhaps we should do one for Perl too:

It's like having King Kong as your very own personal body guard

Good analogy:
You know, they call Perl the "eight-hundred-pound gorilla" of scripting
languages.
Although most of the time, it would be a a very unsuitable body guard
(can't get into a car, into a plane, go to a party, etc..).

OTHOH James Bond is always perfect. He would sleep with your wife
though...