Textbook of Linux

b. 1956, Haarlem, Netherlands — Python's Benevolent Dictator For Life (emeritus)

Also known as: van Rossum, Guido, BDFL

Guido van Rossum began writing Python in December 1989 at CWI in Amsterdam as a hobby project during a Christmas break. In thirty-five years Python has become the most widely taught programming language in universities, the dominant language for scientific computing and machine learning, and a staple of Linux system administration — installed by default on nearly every distribution.

Van Rossum guided Python's design as its Benevolent Dictator For Life until 2018, when he stepped down after a particularly exhausting PEP dispute. Python is now governed by an elected Steering Council. He worked at Google, at Dropbox, and — since 2020 — at Microsoft on the CPython core team, focusing on making Python faster.

Python's strengths reflect his taste: readability, explicit over implicit, batteries included, a gentle learning curve.