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Welcome Guido

tech.dropbox.com

347 pointsjohns44 comments

Congrats to both Dropbox and Guido.

I'm ashamed to say I didn't know until TFA that Guido is the BDFL...I actually thought Linus had inspired it, though that's because he seems to be the one who most frequently causes others to invoke it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_Dictator_for_Life

Also kind of funny that Matz is the only creator of a recent [*and major] language that isn't in that Wiki list. Is he really that hands off of Ruby (compared to Guido and Python?)

It looks like someone took the liberty to add Matz to that list since your comment, although the reference they used is just to Ruby's wikipedia page which makes no mention of him being a BDFL.

Is he really that hands off of Ruby (compared to Guido and Python?)

No, he's very much hands on in big decisions. Proof: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4849646

However, he's certainly easily persuaded by reason, consensus and results and Ruby has now split into multiple competing implementations, so "dictator" has always seemed a harsh term for him to me.

I am wondering if the phrase, like so much else in the Python world, is a reference to a Monty Python sketch...

Edit:

Nevermind. Just found the answer to this question on the "Talk" page for that same wikipedia article:

“This is Guido speaking. A few months ago I found an email from 1995 in an old mailbox that I had saved since then, which was meeting notes from one of the first meetings of the Python Software Association (a precursor of the PSF). Nearly everyone present was given a jocular title, and mine was in full "First Interim benevolent Dictator for Life". Once I track this down again, can I post it on the wiki page or should I do something else first? I'm pretty sure that the titles were made up collectively there and that the term did not originate in a Monty Python skit. Most likely inventors of the term are Barry Warsaw or Ken Manheimer, who were both present at the meeting (I think) and have just thekind of mind to come up with such a term. I don't know how the term subsequently became popular -- perhaps it was used in early PSA mailings. Gvanrossum (talk) 04:21, 31 July 2008 (UTC)”

Those Talk pages sure are useful.

For the creators of the three top web languages of PHP, Ruby, and Python:

- 2/3 currently work for YC companies.

- 3/3 have at one point worked for a YC company.

That I find extremely impressive. Speaks a lot to the calibar of the YC program. A big congrats to Dropbox too! :)

Guido --> Dropbox

Matz --> Heroku

Rasmus --> WePay

Actually:

  Rasmus --> Etsy

I think the implication is that Rasmus used to work for WePay, a YC company (i.e., that's what makes it 3/3). Etsy, Rasmus's current employer, didn't go through YC.

I'm a Rubyist but I find "the three top web languages of PHP, Ruby, and Python" odd. I'd suspect C# and Java (and possibly classic ASP?) are still more heavily used in webapps overall than Python or Ruby. A reasonable counterargument could be that C# and Java aren't primarily used for webapps, but then neither is Python(?)

Also a Rubyist here. Not trying to start a war.

Take "the three top web languages of [blank]" as "the three [descriptive adjective] of [list]"

No one can argue that PHP, Ruby & Python are some top of the top languages on the web. Didn't mean for "the" to seem as limiting as you took it.

Isn't English fun! :-)

My interpretation wasn't entirely unfair. The "for" and double "of" result in an ambiguous meaning. "top" is most commonly a superlative, similar to "best" or "most popular", as in "the three best actors". But you used it in a different sense, as in "three top actors" (though this doesn't usually work with "the" before it.)

I do see where you're coming from though and what you intended so this is mostly linguistic wankery for a good Friday night in ;-)

I can appreciate that. Thanks for keeping me on my toes there ;)

Can anyone tell the inside story? Did he not like it at Google? What is it that Dropbox offered to lure him?

What is it that Dropbox offered to lure him?

Well, isn't Dropbox written in Python...?

A lot of things written in Python. It's hardly an incentive enough to pluck someone from Google.

Sure, I'm not suggesting that was the only factor. Only that, I bet it played a part in tipping the scales? :)

Also, while there are plenty of shops using Python, Dropbox is certainly one of the ones seeing an appreciable amount of success, no?

He worked with Python on the App Engine team as well.

I'm sick of Google being hailed as a magical place you'd have to be crazy to leave. Look: Google sucks. All technology companies suck, albeit in different ways. It's possible for a talented, rational person to hate working at Google, and I don't care for all the Googlers on HN saying otherwise.

His Google+ post says they're "parting as the best of friends", so it doesn't sound like he's unhappy with Google. Maybe he just feels like a change?

Cash. Lots of cash.

Sad to see Guido leave the App Engine team... But this is a selfish view :-)

Congrats to Dropbox!

1. Will GO be the next Python at least inside GOOG?

2. What seems to be happening to ndb.models in near future?

3. Will Guido leaving Google affect webapp2 in any way?

Google has been heavily pushing Go internally for a while now. They have weekly pamphlets that they put up in bathroom stalls to educate employees.

Really? Can you get some pictures of that?

I don't work at Google, but toured their Austin office during a hackathon. A friend confirmed that they did as well for their Mountain View campus.

Their blog post on 'Testing on the toilet' - http://googletesting.blogspot.com/2008/08/tott-100-and-count...

I took one last month. It's one of the "learning on the loo" variety, mentioned elsewhere.

http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/11/17/g/

Thanks, yeah I knew of that kind of fortune-cookie silliness.

Using it to promote awareness or learning the fundamentals of a programming language is something else entirely.

> They have weekly pamphlets that they put up in bathroom stalls to educate employees

There's something slightly creepy about that... oO;

You've never visited a Google restroom before?

The practice started with "Testing on the Toilet", which was a way to educate developers about unit-testing best practices. (This was back in 2005 or 2006, when Google very much had a cowboy-coding culture and a lot of products were just thrown over the wall for users to perpetually beta-test.) Then we got "Learning on the Loo", which is general life-hacking tips that started in 2010. I forget the official title of the Go series, but a friend and I were joking that it should be called "Going to the bathroom."

"You've never visited a google restroom before?"

It may surprise you to learn that most people haven't.

"Go, Go, Go..."

When did that start? I don't remember seeing any this summer when I interned with them.

Don't know, I saw them in September.

I left in August. They must have started right after.

Isn't webapp2 a completely external project?

I'm a little curious as to why the link to " the very first lines of code" is a link to a Google search result

They probably copied the link from the results of a Google search, which comes with the Extra Special Googlecruft™.

All the links on this page look they were copied from Google search results. Ironic.

'under unusual circumstances'

Hmm...

I'd love to hear more about why he'll work on at Dropbox.

With the creator of Python on your team, what can't you do?

switch to Ruby?

With the creator of Python on your team, what can't you do?

(See http://neopythonic.blogspot.com/2009/04/final-words-on-tail-...)

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