39 ms·

Guido van Rossum joins Microsoft

• poma88 6y ago
  That is more boring than retirement.
• MR4D 6y ago
  So instead of BDFL for Python, he's going "make using Python better". Congrats to him for finding something fun to do in retirement - dictators usually end up with a different outcome. ;) I'm looking forward to seeing the future of Python - I think this move will be great for the whole community, and lets him push boundaries without being bogged down on the management side.
  • URfejk 6y ago
    A dictator found himself a new master. :)
  • systemvoltage 6y ago
    An official package manager with great dependency resolution would be fantastic. Or over take pipenv or poetry and sponsor it through Microsoft $$$. The biggest hurdle to python right now is the stupid package managers. We need cargo for Python.
    • meowface 6y ago
      poetry feels like the closest equivalent to cargo that I've used. pipenv is better than the previous status quo but is still oddly unstable, with random new issues I encounter with every release. poetry "just works" for me, has better dependency resolution, and IMO has a nicer interface and terminal output to boot.
      • codethief 6y ago
        Could you elaborate on what issues you've had with pipenv? I've only had very good experiences with it, so I'm surprised how many people here seem to prefer poetry.
        • BerislavLopac 6y ago
          https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises-a-lot-delivers-very-little/ https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises-a-l...
          • codethief 6y ago
            Regarding not being able to work outside the project root[0]: This is actually one of the things that I love about pipenv! Anaconda, for instance, has environments that are not tied to a directory and are referred to by name (rather than by a directory path) and I've found this to be an absolute nightmare and extremely cumbersome! Not everyone has 10 projects that can share the same environment. (Besides, I would argue they never should.) I, for instance, have 10 projects that all require a slightly different environment and it's much easier to type a generic `pipenv shell` on the command line no matter what project I'm in, rather than trying to remember the Conda environment's name time and again. (Besides, it can be easily automated using .bashrc.) [0]: https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises-a-lot-delivers-very-little/#working-outside-of-the-project-root https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2018/07/17/pipenv-promises-a-l...
    • roel_v 6y ago
      I only know a bit about Python - in what sense is pip not a package manager?
      • andi999 6y ago
        in the functioning sense.
        • estomagordo 6y ago
          care to elaborate?
      • nickjj 6y ago
        > in what sense is pip not a package manager? It is a package manager but it lacks features that many other package managers have in Ruby, Node, Elixir, and other languages. For example there's no concept of a separate lock file with pip. Sure you can pip freeze your dependencies out to a file but this includes dependencies of dependencies, not just your app's top level dependencies. The frozen file is good to replicate versions across builds but it's really bad for human readability. Ideally we should have a file made for humans to define their top level dependencies (with version pinning support) and a lock file that has every dependency with exact pinned versions.
        • musingsole 6y ago
          Isn't that effectively the result of a typical `setup.py -> pip compile -> requirements.txt` flow? The setup.py file contains a human readable designation of requirements and then `pip compile` generates a requirements.txt with all deps' (and deps of deps') versions specified.
        • xapata 6y ago
          > Sure you can pip freeze your dependencies out to a file but this includes dependencies of dependencies, not just your app's top level dependencies. Isn't that a good thing? > no concept of a separate lock file with pip. setup.py/.cfg vs requirements.txt, no?
    • dalfonso 6y ago
      Microsoft already bought NPM so there's precedent.
      • TheDesolate0 6y ago
        Yeah, but do we REALLY want M$ to control, github, npm, node, rust, python, and ...
        • vmchale 6y ago
          We still have Idris and ATS.
          • ampdepolymerase 6y ago
            Considering that half of all prominent functional PL researchers are hired by Microsoft Research I won't be too confident about that.
        • coldtea 6y ago
          M"$"? 1999 called, they want their edginess back...
          • webmaven 6y ago
            > M"$"? 1999 called, they want their edginess back... You realize that we're potentially just one leadership change away from returning to the 'bad old days', right?
            • oblio 6y ago
              You're missing the big picture. In 1999, Microsoft's revenue was at least 10x that of the closest competitor. It controlled the client (desktop) and was working on controlling the server, too. Google, Facebook, Netflix, etc didn't exist. Amazon was much smaller and in a different niche. Apple was trying to not keel over in 2 months. We're not a leadership change away from anything. The world has changed.
    • Yajirobe 6y ago
      pip is completely fine
      • robmurrer 6y ago
        pip in virtualenv. It is solved problem.
        • coldtea 6y ago
          Not even pip developers believe "pip in virtualenv" makes python dependencies and package management a "solved problem"...
          • user5994461 6y ago
            90% of professional python developers believe that python dependencies is a solved problem (with pip and virtualenv). The rest is too vocal.
            • coldtea 6y ago
              >90% of professional python developers believe that python dependencies is a solved problem (with pip and virtualenv). 99% of professional python developers think that you've pulled this statistic out of your ass!
              • deleted 6y ago
                [deleted]
              • webmaven 6y ago
                > >90% of professional python developers believe that python dependencies is a solved problem (with pip and virtualenv). > 99% of professional python developers think that you've pulled this statistic out of your ass! 72.6% of all statistics are made up, anyway.
            • dragonwriter 6y ago
              > 90% of professional python developers believe that python dependencies is a solved problem (with pip and virtualenv). I doubt that even 90% of those professional python developers who believe that python dependencies is a solved problem believe that it is solved with pip and virtualenv; the conda faction has to be bigger than 10%. Plus there's the people that think pip/venv aren't enough, but that tools on top of them plug the gaps (poetry). But I think that the share of professional developers who see it as a solved problem at all is less than 90%. Obviously, we've all got some way of working with/around the issues, that doesn't mean that we don't feel that they exist.
    • staticassertion 6y ago
      I'd love to see Poetry take off. I'm watching it pretty closely.
      • transcranial 6y ago
        Same here. Poetry has been a joy, after many bouts of frustration with pipenv.
      • kamyarg 6y ago
        Same, we switched from pipenv ~6 months ago, had not had to worry about package/env related stuff since then, "just works". "evangelized" a sibling team also to consider switching, they were sceptical but just recently they mentioned they also like it more.
    • robmurrer 6y ago
      Better not move to NuGeT.eXe
    • kitanata 6y ago
      We use poetry for apps in production. At this point I think that's the winning solution and as it continues to grow and improve I think it will overtake all the others in this respect.
      • hobofan 6y ago
        Yes, Poetry is great! I avoided Python for a long time due to it's bad package management/environment handling situation, but Poetry solved all my problems there.
      • derefr 6y ago
        People keep saying that about every new solution. But then another one comes along that's even better-er, and the previous one peters out. The biggest need for a package manager and its ecosystem is continuity: the stance that new features and paradigms will be gradually shifted toward — without package-ecosystem incompatibilities, without CLI commands just disappearing (but instead, with long deprecation timelines), etc. In other words, an officially-blessed package manager is one where, when something better-er comes along, it gets absorbed by the existing thing, instead of replacing it. That is what the Python ecosystem is missing.
        • DangitBobby 6y ago
          Yes, Poetry should be the blessed package manager.
          • mumblemumble 6y ago
            I only want Poetry to become the be-all-end-all of package managers if it turns out that Python really is never going to fix the core problems that have engendered so many of the hacks upon which Poetry (and its competitors) is precariously balanced. Pyenv and venv, for example.
            • bshanks 6y ago
              If you were doing a green field redesign, how would you want Python to fix the core problems?
    • beagle3 6y ago
      Conda works well. Have never used cargo - what can cargo do that conda cannot?
      • sidlls 6y ago
        Conda works slightly better than pip, which is a pretty low bar. Python package management is probably the absolute worst thing about that language.
        • beagle3 6y ago
          Still, it worked perfectly for me for Python, and a few more things. So I ask - what problems does conda have? And which of those does cargo not have? Alternatively, what does cargo do better than conda if they are not feature-for-feature comparable ?
          • baq 6y ago
            conda can manage python versions itself as if it was another package. https://docs.conda.io/projects/conda/en/latest/user-guide/tasks/manage-python.html https://docs.conda.io/projects/conda/en/latest/user-guide/ta... i've never used it particular feature, but then i'm using python since 1.5 and i'm just used to it being a bit behind the times. stockholm syndrome, you might say, especially after trying out rust and seeing the work of art cargo is.
          • jshen 6y ago
            How do you ensure a team of 30 developers are all using the same version of python and all of the dependencies of your project with conda? How do you distinguish prod dependencies from dev dependencies? How do you update and manage transitive dependencies? There are more, but those are the big three.
            • beagle3 6y ago
              Conda manages Python itself as one of the dependencies - so that’s not actually a problem. I used conda to manage 2.6, 2.7 and 3.3 side by side, a d that was fine. I never locked the patch version (e.g. 2.7.3 vs 2.7.5) though that is definitely possible. It apparently requires a specific workflow - explicitly editing the requirements.txt file, rather than freezing it - which is not harder and which I was doing since day 1 but is apparently uncommon. (And it worked well across a few tens of machines, some running windows and some running Linux, with a mix of os versions and distributions. So I know it worked well already in 2013, and I’m sure it works better now). Speed is not good, but I never had it take more than a minute for anything. Some people here are reporting 15 minutes resolution times - that is a real problem.
    • vmchale 6y ago
      > An official package manager with great dependency resolution would be fantastic. Need something like cabal. And a package index.
    • birdyrooster 6y ago
      Python’s biggest hurdle is and always will be speed. Pip and wheels aren’t great but I would rather stop using golang. That’s a bigger win for me to stop maintaining proficiency and tooling for a language that I honestly consider inferior for the way I think about problems.
      • systemvoltage 6y ago
        Strongly disagree. Python’s adoption is primarily driven by how easy it is to get started (barring some nasties in datetime, typing, and ofcourse the package manager). Python is plenty fast for most automation tasks.
        • fermigier 6y ago
          Python is fast enough for many tasks, including number crunching for which it excels (as long as you are using the right libraries). Projects like Cython allow to tweak without too much effort the parts of a program that need an extra-boost. Last but not least, there have been discussions in the Python community in the last weeks of ways to speed up considerably the default (CPython) implementation. Hopefully, all of this will bear some fruits in the next 2-5 years. Guido will probably help from his new position at Microsoft.
          • Radim 6y ago
            > discussions in the Python community in the last weeks of ways to speed up CPython This piqued my interest. I found this, by Mark Shannon: https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-dev@python.org/thread/RDXLCH22T2EZDRCBM6ZYYIUTBWQVVVWH/ https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-dev@python.org/... Is that what you mean?
          • birdyrooster 6y ago
            Only because libraries have to use C bindings to make it fast enough. I don't think Python performance is good enough when I have to stop writing in the language that we are benchmarking to get good results.
        • 6y ago
    • bengalister 6y ago
      I like the way npm does. It has a cache of all downloaded versions and it tries to flatten the dependencies when possible. If there are incompatible versions they remain deep in the dependency hierarchy.
      • vorpalhex 6y ago
        Npm has so many woes though. Love the idea but the execution leaves much to be desired.
        • symlinkk 6y ago
          Like what?
        • lootsauce 6y ago
          Can you go deeper on this, honestly interested. I use NPM all the time have not run into too many issues.
    • tomrod 6y ago
      I jumped down the black hole of pip + geo packages this week. Your comments are absolutely spot onm
    • throwaway894345 6y ago
      Package management and performance. Microsoft has done an impressive job of making software development better lately, and if any community needs it, it’s Python. Python has a lot of potential, but it’s sorely hampered by poor package management and performance, which are ultimately both symptoms of its commitment to exposing the entire CPython interpreter as a stable public interface. If the Python leadership were willing to commit to a narrower interface that met the goals of the c-extension community and also allowed Python to improve with respect to performance and package management (and I think this is very possible, hpy gets us close afaict), then we could have the best of both worlds, and I’m optimistic that Microsoft could provide this leadership.
      • zo1 6y ago
        What poor performance? At this point, this criticism has become a "thing" that no one really expands on or enumerates as if it's a given. It's not a given, and at the very least is nuanced and complicated.
        • throwaway894345 6y ago
          I’m not sure where you’re getting your information, but Python itself is quite slow (100-1000X slower than Go or Java) and it’s only “fast” when it’s dispatching to C or Rust or FORTRAN, and even then (to your point about nuance) these optimizations are only feasible sometimes; namely, when the cost of serializing is lower than the efficiencies gained by the optimizations available in the target language. This is all pretty widely discussed, including here on this very forum. No doubt that Python is sometimes fast enough (e.g., vanilla CRUD apps that do all of the heavy lifting in Postgres), but sometimes it’s not and you’re left with really crumby optimization options. And since we rarely can know with certainty on the outset of a project whether or not the bottlenecks will be amenable to the optimizations afforded by Python, it’s a dangerous game. I would even go so far as to say that other languages have become quite good at many of the things that Python is good at (namely pace of development) while being much better at the things that it’s not good at (performance, package management, etc), so I actually wouldn’t recommend starting new projects in Python except for certain niches, like scientific computing (and who knows if Python will even retain its dominance there).
    • hodgesrm 6y ago
      But if you fix Python package managers that will remove 50% of the audience for Docker. Think of the children! ;)
    • fmakunbound 6y ago
      Definitely this, but I doubt such a luminary of computer science will interested in such work. The XKCD comic on Python package managers/Python environments is not an exaggeration. I've always wanted to get more into Python but every time I attempt to, it's this hurdle that dissuades me. Edit: Also, I guess Poetry is another thing that came along since my last attempt.
      • acqq 6y ago
        > The XKCD comic on Python package managers/Python environments is not an exaggeration. Thanks, I haven't seen it before. It's really quite close to the state on my home machine: https://xkcd.com/1987/ https://xkcd.com/1987/ It's not that I couldn't eventually resolve the current state, it's that at the moment a few programs I regularly run work, in spite of the different dependencies they have, and I know that starting "cleaning up" will cost too much time.
        • webmaven 6y ago
          > > The XKCD comic on Python package managers/Python environments is not an exaggeration. > Thanks, I haven't seen it before. It's really quite close to the state on my home machine: > https://xkcd.com/1987/ https://xkcd.com/1987/ Hmm. I've had machines with similar states, though never with both Anaconda and Homebrew. Instead, I often had (in addition to the rest of the system-level snarl) isolated per-app Python interpreters that were specified & constructed with Buildout for development testing & deployment. Though I don't quite get the arrow from Homebrew 2.7 to Python.org 2.6. Is that actually a thing or hyperbole?
          • acqq 6y ago
            > Is that actually a thing or hyperbole? It's fiction, of course. Art often has to exaggerate to make a point. I exaggerated too, just to remain in the artistic rather than the technical spirit of the comics. But there are some important bits of truth there, like in every good joke.
            • 6y ago
    • nickbauman 6y ago
      So I hear Poetry is the way to go these days for python. But a plurality of the people I encounter in the Clojure community came there because leiningen (Clojure's package manager that uses Maven under the covers) "just works" and they got tired of having a tough time reproducing builds consistently on other platforms / OSs with Python; not to mention the performance gains of the JVM.
      • JAlexoid 6y ago
        Python's package management is light years behind, the much hated Maven.
    • dcolkitt 6y ago
      I think in general Python's biggest challenge is that it doesn't scale well. This is an agglomeration of issues around the same theme: bad packaging when there's a lot of cross-cutting dependencies, slow performance, no concurrency, typing as second-class citizens, etc. All of that is barely noticeable when you're just getting started on a small experimental project, but incredibly painful in large production systems. I strongly suspect that devs' satisfaction with Python is strongly correlated with the size of the codebase they're working on. Generally people using Python for one-off projects or self-contained tools tend to be pretty happy. People stuck in sprawling enterprise codebases, with O(million) lines of code to wrangle, seem almost universally miserable with the language. What I've observed a lot is that many startups or greenfield projects start with Python to get an MVP out the door as fast as possible. Then as the scope of the software expands they feel increasingly bogged down and trapped in the language.
      • d0mine 6y ago
        Have you ever seen O(million) lines enterprise codebase that didn't suck?
        • MR4D 6y ago
          LOL!! Or even worse - could you imagine how many lines that would be in C++ ? Yowza!
          • oarabbus_ 6y ago
            n!
        • lrem 6y ago
          I've worked on several separate projects of that size in C++ and Go. None of them seemed to achieve a similar mess as Python codebases with one or two dozen thousand lines seem to. OTOH, all the typing developments in Python should have helped? I don't have that much experience with them in enterprise setting.
        • zo1 6y ago
    • shirakawasuna 6y ago
      Poetry is very good: https://python-poetry.org/ https://python-poetry.org/ It should be heavily promoted as the official option and included with the distribution.
    • Arkanosis 6y ago
      Cargo for Python… that's pretty much Poetry. I was already in love with Python, but Poetry has definitely made me a much happier Python developer.
    • p1necone 6y ago
      I've never used anything I liked better than Maven Central + Gradle. Why can't everyone just copy the Java ecosystem when it comes to package management. (Although the maven package ecosystem seems ideal to me, Gradle is just "good enough" - it's mostly the standards around versioning and tooling dealing with versioning and everything being there that makes it good to me).
    • wtetzner 6y ago
      Maybe they should just adopt the Nix package manager, and put some of Microsoft’s resources into making it work on Windows.
    • 0xbadcafebee 6y ago
      > sponsor it through Microsoft $$$ You don't want that. When companies "sponsor" things they try to take them over, unless it's a pure donation, which is rare. The community then drops out because a company is in control. Later the project is abandoned by then company. It's a slow death spiral. I would love if Guido could create a new PEP for extending modules with generic namespaces, ala Perl/CPAN modules. There aren't 15 different libraries for doing the same thing in Perl, there's 1. You never replace it, you extend it by making a new module in a hierarchical namespace. The same core library's code might not change in years while new extensions can keep popping up. So even if you think Requests sucks, you can make Requests::UserAgent which inherits Requests code and extends it / gives a better interface. And these can be written & packaged by completely different authors. Then maybe Pypi wouldn't have 5,000 nearly identical yet mostly unusable modules, or modules with nonsense names.
    • sakex 6y ago
      I had a job interview today and said this exact last sentence ahah
    • ropable 6y ago
      Just use poetry (my preference) or pipenv. This has been a solved problem for a long time.
    • jtdev 6y ago
      What’s wrong with virtualenv + requirements.txt + pip?
    • takeda 6y ago
      What's wrong with poetry right now?
    • greggman3 6y ago
      defaulting to installing and finding packages locally would be a big win for me.
    • apichat 6y ago
      Gnu Guix would be a great one ! (the package manager, not the distro GNU Guix System) https://guix.gnu.org/ https://guix.gnu.org/ https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2019/gnu-guix-1.0.0-released/ https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2019/gnu-guix-1.0.0-released/ https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2020/gnu-guix-1.1.0-released/ https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2020/gnu-guix-1.1.0-released/ https://guix.gnu.org/#guix-in-other-distros https://guix.gnu.org/#guix-in-other-distros https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2020/guile-3-and-guix/ https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2020/guile-3-and-guix/
  • DylanDmitri 6y ago
    I'm hoping for a Jupyter/Excel hybrid, but that's mostly wishful thinking.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • st1x7 6y ago
      Please no. Excel is great when it stays within its lane and use case and doesn't try to be everything. Jupyter is okay-ish is some places but in general is way overused. Mixing them together would be a move in the wrong direction and a bit of a mess.
    • Aperocky 6y ago
      Oh no.
    • gota 6y ago
      If you mean to retire VB in favor of Python for writing macros, I'm all for it. Not much Jupyter though
    • likelybear 6y ago
      That's arguably the goal of [Pluto.jl](https://github.com/fonsp/Pluto.jl https://github.com/fonsp/Pluto.jl). It's a (Julia-specific) reactive notebook that automatically updates all affected cells and has no hidden state.
      • DylanDmitri 6y ago
        Ooh that's really good, thank you for sharing!
      • antupis 6y ago
        That looks so good that I am thinking about learning Julia.
        • O_H_E 6y ago
  • 29athrowaway 6y ago
    If I remember correctly, Guido resigned as BDFL in 2018.
  • nickbauman 6y ago
    This is good news. It's sad that I find a lot of interesting possibilities on Azure end up being "windows only." Hopefully having more support for Python will fix some of that.
  • bxbna 6y ago
    I'm not sure that Python will profit form this. He has had 50% positions before and most of the new things he did were precisely in the period in which he did not work for a corporation. If anything, this further corporate influence on Python development is not something to be applauded. I bet there will be lots of more churn in the next five years, big announcements and no results.
  • eznzt 6y ago
    I hope they use Microsoft's money to make Python fast (or at least fast enough)
  • pmontra 6y ago
    At the top of my wish list there is a deployment tool for web applications like capistrano / mina for Ruby. I ended up writing my own for the project of a customer. It's been running for a few years now. Same customer, another project, I'm experimenting with a deployment system based on git format-patch. It copies the patches on the server (we have only one server) and applies them with patch. Then restart the web app. It's fun to learn the internals by rewriting the tooling but a good tooling to start with would be better.
  • sireat 6y ago
    Solve "How to deploy my sweet Python script on grandma's computer" problem. That is some reasonable way to deploy to someone who is not a programmer nor tech person. Not sure how much has changed since this was written: http://effbot.org/pyfaq/can-python-be-compiled-to-machine-code-c-or-some-other-language.htm http://effbot.org/pyfaq/can-python-be-compiled-to-machine-co... PyInstaller.. well.. it works okay with std.. sometimes it does not. It is the Electron solution.. add pandas to a project and you get a 600MB install. As developers we can manage to deal with package managers.
    • Pxtl 6y ago
      Such a shame things like that used to be simple - Py2Exe was fine and Windows didn't freak the hell out at the sight of an unsigned binary.
    • askvictor 6y ago
      In the education space (where Python is pretty big), the biggest problem we have is that Python code isn't 'shareable' so it's hard for kids to show off their creations to Grandma. Sure, there are some products which work to work around that (like repl.it), but the core problem remains - a student can't easily get their Python program to run on an arbitrary computer. It's why I'm very tempted to move to JS for teaching, despite all of the dragons lurking there.
      • floydnoel 6y ago
        I agree, it’s one of the reasons I stopped teaching my kids Python and switched to JS. It is so easy to share and so portable, and runs everywhere!
    • benhurmarcel 6y ago
      Not just to grandma. I have trouble deploying my scripts to my colleagues.
      • anitil 6y ago
        I had this with a collleague the other day: 1. Install foo 2. No not that foo! 3. Reinstall python 4. Goto 1
  • ImaCake 6y ago
    >Congrats to him for finding something fun to do in retirement - dictators usually end up with a different outcome. ;) I guess he is going for a Diocletian cabbage farmer style retirement.
  • business007 6y ago
    Why dictator? lmao I'm not familiar with the guy on anything else than he's PHP's creator
    • Pxtl 6y ago
      In the off chance this isn't a joke: Python, not PHP. And he wasn't just its creator, he was the head of the project for its whole life until his recent retirement. Typical term in the OSS community for one guy who is in charge of a massive OSS project is Benevolent Dictator For Life, or BDFL. And Guido was definitely one of those.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • takeda 6y ago
    Does that mean I will need to switch from mypy to pyright?
• azhenley 6y ago
  I’m excited to see what kind of teams they get going that focus on Python tools!
• zerr 6y ago
  I wonder about such successful but dedicated to a single project persons - don't they have a FOMO?
  • caturopath 6y ago
    Like Mark Zuckerberg? And Bob Dylan? Van Rossum is famous for the Python language and language-related stuff for Python, but he did stuff in his career before inventing it and has done stuff since (for instance, a lot of his work at Google was on App Engine).
  • binarymax 6y ago
    FOMO on what? Python makes more of an impact on the world than most people would even dream of for their projects. The products that use the language cover the entire spectrum of digital technology...
    • zerr 6y ago
      Yes, it is a very popular glue scripting language (to oversimplify a bit :)) but that's not the point, I mean that Guido himself is not involved in all of that spectrum directly (AFAIK).
  • markus_zhang 6y ago
    I'd say it's really exciting to stay focused. Plus Python has been the hot baby for quite a while so he is not missing out anything IMO.
• Cherian 6y ago
  Watching Microsoft from the 90s adapt and to see Satya get to do what he wants is pretty amazing!
  • russtrotter 6y ago
    I was thinking the same. I spent many of the formative years of my career (late-80's, most of the 90's) HATING microsoft but to see them now and all the relatively "open" stuff that they not only embrace but can't really extinguish is refreshing. I think some of that attitude put Satya in place, but he's run with the ball under the same ethos.
    • mrmonkeyman 6y ago
      Why is everyone so dense or should I say naive? Microsoft is pulling the classic embrace, extinguish card. It is the exact same fckng process all over again and you are all falling for it. It'll just take a decade or so. Just wait.
    • beagle3 6y ago
      They only open that which they have no advantage in. Operating system is as closed (and as hostile) as ever, so is office and sqlserver. Xbox requires an always on connection. It is their right, of course. But I don’t buy the “new Microsoft” ethos.
  • beagle3 6y ago
    Win10 is still user hostile. A recent update on a computer I support for an older family member installed an uninstallable Edge, hijacked the PDF association, and with the first PDF opened through edge, used credentials stored in Office to log in to Microsoft.com “for convenience” without asking. The monopolistic DNA still runs strong in Microsoft. They are behaving nicely only where they have no advantage. I don’t buy the “new Microsoft”, not one bit.
    • donor20 6y ago
      Yeah, one side is doing great work - the Win10 story still sucks a bit / lot.
• Proven 6y ago
  Nice, happy to hear that and great for Python. MS has been great for Python.
• fghorow 6y ago
  Guido, IMHO the primary reason Python is great is because you have taste. Please insist on keeping that at MS...
  • KingOfCoders 6y ago
    Same for Clojure.
    • Scarbutt 6y ago
      It's sad, dealing directly with extreme over-engineered enterprise Java libraries to compensate for Clojure's lack of ecosystem erodes all the attractiveness of the language for doing real-world or hobby applications. OTOH, there is no much benefit today in Clojure over other languages for database backed apps, most of what is considered good Clojure code is more about the methodology than the language per se. The real benefits IMO is when you paired it with Datomic avoiding the impedance mismatch in data structures, but Datomic is another can of worms.
  • URfejk 6y ago
    MS is soon going to show him who the boss is ...
    • goatinaboat 6y ago
      MS is soon going to show him who the boss is ... They let Anders Hejlsberg have free reign over his languages, encouraged it in fact.
      • URfejk 6y ago
        Well, time will tell ...
        • goatinaboat 6y ago
          Well, time will tell ... He joined them in 1996, and has done J++, C# and now TypeScript. They seem quite content for him to just keep making new languages which they throw all their marketing muscle behind.
• estomagordo 6y ago
  GUID-o. Hehe. I'll show myself out.
  • soapdog 6y ago
    Here comes P#, I'm seeing myself out as well.
    • estomagordo 6y ago
      Hey, that's what I tweeted to him!
    • webmaven 6y ago
      > Here comes P#, I'm seeing myself out as well. I tried to convince Guido to do a P# April Fool's (I think in 2005 or 2006), but he disliked the idea so much I didn't do it myself either.
    • ComputerGuru 6y ago
      You joke, but IronPython was a thing.
    • Izikiel43 6y ago
      P# was already a project at microsoft. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/safe-asynchronous-programming-p-p/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/safe-asynch... It has transformed since into: https://microsoft.github.io/coyote/ https://microsoft.github.io/coyote/
• whimsicalism 6y ago
  Does this elevate the future possibilities of Pyright in any way?
• maxioatic 6y ago
  I wonder if they asked him algorithm problems in his interview /s This is cool though. I'll be curious to see what he works on.
  • marta_morena_28 6y ago
    I am pretty sure they did, unless he got hired at some VP/Distinguished Engineer level. And to be clear: If you are unable to solve these common algorithmic questions that companies like Microsoft ask, then that's not the right place for you to work. This is a tangent, but there are literally thousands of companies that won't require you to solve these problems. The thing is, at Microsoft & co. you don't just do this in an interview. You do it at your job too. We do foundational work in many teams and we need to solve algorithmic problems practically every week. If you are unable to code yourself out of a DP problem or scared of NP completeness and approximation algorithms, then maybe find a different job instead of complaining about the interview process?
    • whoisjuan 6y ago
      > I am pretty sure they did Lol! I'd bet my year salary they didn't.
      • esyir 6y ago
        Well, you might want to check guido's twitter before making that bet.
        • whoisjuan 6y ago
          What exactly am I supposed to check in his Twitter?
          • esyir 6y ago
            Whoops, mismatched your reply to the wrong branch of the comment tree
      • 6y ago
• seemslegit 6y ago
  And the next language to become unusable without a microsoft-controlled ecosystem is...
  • qz2 6y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE
  • estomagordo 6y ago
    What were the previous examples of this?
    • seemslegit 6y ago
      C#, F#, Typescript, JavaScript via npm
      • Master_Odin 6y ago
        C# and F# are great examples of how MS is willing to allow people out of their ecosystem to use them with all their efforts with .NET Core and having it run places other than Windows. npm is trivial to replace with yarn and a custom registry.
      • estomagordo 6y ago
        There were C# and TypeScript outside of MS first?
  • tsjq 6y ago
    Embrace, Extend, Extinguish .
    • seemslegit 6y ago
      Nah that was the old MS, new MS just replaces own with rent.
• chrshawkes 6y ago
  Nice, big fan.
• ecshafer 6y ago
  Retirement has always sounded boring anyways. Congrats to Guido, I wonder what he will be working on specifically. Python could be improved on Windows, even simple cases don't work quite as expected always. I would expect Python is used decently widely at MS anyways. Maybe Python being first class on .NET? Or some Python specific things for Azure.
  • lostmsu 6y ago
    There already is IronPython. But it lacks community, and stalled after 2.7 release. All CPython alternatives stall do due to the widely used C API (required for NumPy, TensorFlow, etc). This API is very CPython specific. There is some work on both sides, that might overcome the issue though: CPython is trying to decouple API from the implementation details, while .NET is working on better C interop story (.NET 5 just introduced ability to export managed functions as C functions).
• save_ferris 6y ago
  If this includes improving dependency and runtime version management, I'm pumped. It's been a couple of years since I've used python, but those two things seemed like such warts compared to the rest of the experience.
• jawns 6y ago
  I would be curious to hear about other people who "retired" then went back to work. I feel like if I reached the FIRE point, I would continue to work, but entirely on my own terms, not as an employee of somebody else. Even at my favorite jobs, where I got to spend the majority of my time doing interesting things, having to deal with red tape, institutional slowness, upper management, etc. was not fun, and I can't imagine it getting any better when you know you are now working only because it's your hobby.
  • Denvercoder9 6y ago
    At his level, there's very little red tape, institutional slowness and management to deal with.
    • kortilla 6y ago
      As long as he doesn’t do anything that impacts the actual business. DEs working on Microsoft products absolutely have red tape and institutional slowness.
    • NordSteve 6y ago
      I have exactly that deal at MS (and I know many others who do), and I'm a couple levels away from DE. I'm later in my career, don't need the job for $$ (they know it), lead a great team, work on a meaningful project that I pitched in an area where I'm an expert, great support from management. The only thing remotely close to "red tape and institutional slowness" is about making sure what we build meets the promises (privacy and compliance, for example) that we've made to customers.
    • chillacy 6y ago
      Not only that but he probably has a small legion of full time developers working on his projects now that no normal FIRE savings would be able to afford.
  • ghaff 6y ago
    I think it really depends. I could see continuing working for someone longer in an IC role if no one is breathing down my neck to do things I don't really want to do and, especially, if I could negotiate flexibility in terms of time off, etc. I'm actually pretty close on both those things today and, post-COVID, I could see making adjustments more in that general direction. ADDED: As Denvercoder9 writes, some companies/groups can be pretty good about being hands-off a senior person who they want and also know doesn't need the job. Others, of course, are not. Certainly many Sun folks did not sit well with Oracle.
• Trias11 6y ago
  Make Python Great Again!
• _the_inflator 6y ago
  With Anders Hejlsberg also at Microsoft, maybe they do something like type-safe Python similar to TypeScript? Anyway, congrats to both MS and Anders! This will be very interesting for Python.
  • Anka33 6y ago
    And {}
  • duckerude 6y ago
    > something like type-safe Python similar to TypeScript That already exists, and van Rossum worked on it: http://mypy-lang.org/ http://mypy-lang.org/
    • ehsankia 6y ago
      Also Pyre [0] by Facebook and Pytype [1] by Google. More importantly, the core part (type annotations) allowing these libraries to exist has been added to core python for years now and keeps on evolving, so it is an ongoing effort. EDIT: As mentioned below, also added Pyright [2] by Microsoft [0] https://github.com/facebook/pyre-check https://github.com/facebook/pyre-check [1] https://github.com/google/pytype https://github.com/google/pytype [2] https://github.com/microsoft/pyright https://github.com/microsoft/pyright
      • tracnar 6y ago
        You forgot the one made by Microsoft, Pyright (and PyLance).
        • ajliu 6y ago
          Having tried a good number of these various type checkers, it seems like Pyright is the only one that properly supports all of the accepted PEP changes to typing.
  • bmitc 6y ago
    Isn't that just F#?
• FreekNortier 6y ago
  Python for Excel data manipulation would be great.
  • claudeganon 6y ago
    Office suite automation with Python would be great across the board. The external python libraries that do this are pretty clunky and VB scripting is a hot mess.
    • tomjen3 6y ago
      Office now allows you to script it using Typescript, so you don't have to use VB any more.
      • claudeganon 6y ago
        Oh that’s cool! Haven’t had to do anything with it in a few years, but excited to check out how this works.
      • jannes 6y ago
        I'm really curious what you are talking about? I could only find "Office Scripts", which doesn't work in the normal desktop apps (only the web version). Edit: I just found out about "Script Lab". Is that what you are talking about? https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/office/WA104380862 https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/office/WA10438...
    • phonon 6y ago
      https://www.xlwings.org/ https://www.xlwings.org/ and https://www.pyxll.com/ https://www.pyxll.com/
  • binarycodedhex 6y ago
    Agreed. VBA makes by fingers and eyes ooze gangrenous pus.
  • carabiner 6y ago
    First-class integration in Excel would be a game changer. Holy shit. Though adding a multiline editor with indentation in Excel would be really nice as well. We've got to stop pretending Excel functions don't constitute a programming language.
• davidkell 6y ago
  Top of my wish list would be a python <-> VSCode experience at the typescript level of quality. Interesting that mypy is a Dropbox (GvR’s previous gig) whereas Microsoft has a competitor python type checker, pyright [0]. Anyone have experience with it? [0] https://github.com/microsoft/pyright https://github.com/microsoft/pyright
  • dehrmann 6y ago
    Why not use Pycharm?
    • falcor84 6y ago
      Well, one good reason is that unlike VS Code, Pycharm is not open source.
      • criddell 6y ago
        How often have you ever needed the source code for your text editor?
      • duckerude 6y ago
        The community edition is (Apache 2): https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/tree/master/python https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/tree/master/...
        • falcor84 6y ago
          Thanks for sharing. This is really cool. And I'm slightly surprised that Pycharm uses the exact same codebase as IntelliJ, just with a different run configuration [0]. It makes perfect sense of course, but I was pleasantly surprised. [0] `To run PyCharm Community Edition, please use the provided run configuration "PyCharm Community Edition"`
    • bredren 6y ago
      This is an unpopular opinion around here, and I use pycharm almost every day, but I think the future is vscode. Reason is MS doesn’t need to make money on the tool, because it has a halo of services it can sell in and offer perfect integrations for. In addition, MS has GitHub and thus privledged ability to learn from new public code as it is pushed. AI-based code completion offered by kite and tabnine is totally being slept on right now, and MS has the resources to offer a very refined and constantly improving take on this massive dev services opportunity. Jetbrains has said it has a long term project focused on this but as of now there is nothing. I am not suggesting abandoning Pycharm any time soon but it is going to take a bigger company than jetbrains to keep pycharm in the race against vscode.
• binarycodedhex 6y ago
  Any guess on what a major FOSS dev grosses? It has to be at least $700k. $1.5m/yr? $3m? About $200k/yr+, it's a good idea to find a lawyer or similar talent agent to workout the compensation package because they have the skills and can get away with things a hire cannot. I've done this before, it saved time, and ended up with a better package.
  • burgerquizz 6y ago
    levels.fyi gives $650k in SF. But it looks quite low to me. I'd have say 1M/year at least. Any better guess?
    • binarycodedhex 6y ago
      I think you're right. The issue is, due to the power law distribution of talent, the sample size of such roles (and personalities, i.e., how many Python BDFL's are there?) is incredibly small, so it makes precise assessments difficult and the variance increases wildly since there aren't very good comparables. I think he could command nearly $10 megabucks, give half of it away to charities, grants, scholarships, social ventures, and underserved areas to promote STEM college prep, and still have more money that one ostensibly average, middle-class person would know how to invest (real estate on the near periphery of burgeoning urban sprawl areas). Microsoft is a cash cow and is willing to invest in a solid, deep bench to stay competitive, especially in an apparent transition to either EEE or adopt OSS.
      • reducesuffering 6y ago
        Someone else commented that he'll be Distinguished Engineer (DE). But levels.fyi shows 69, the level under DE, some reports of 1-2m. He's almost assuredly receiving 1-3m compensation.
  • bxbna 6y ago
    The ones that let other people do the work or the people who do the work themselves? A lot of prominent folks in the Python space are the former.
• acbart 6y ago
  I don't know about anyone else, but I'm still hopeful for Python integration with Excel. That would be a real gamechanger, depending on how tight the integration is.
• zyx321 6y ago
  Congratulations to Microsoft on successfully hiring a developer with 30 years of Python experience. Living the dream right there.
• bmitc 6y ago
  That's all well and good, but it drives me crazy Microsoft refused and refuses to invest in F#, which could have very well been the Python of today if they had paid any attention to it.
  • justin66 6y ago
    > F#, which could have very well been the Python of today There's a phrase you don't see every day.
  • iammiles 6y ago
    As another F# enthusiast, I share the sentiment, but practically speaking I don't think F# would have been in any position to be the Python of today. It might have had a greater chance if .Net Core existed 15 years ago, but being tied to Windows was a big show-stopper regardless.
    • bmitc 6y ago
      I agree that my comment takes into account too much hindsight, but certainly this is part of the pain. If Microsoft had transitioned .NET to be cross-platform much sooner or from the beginning, then they would have been better off. I was recently surprised to learn that Mono basically existed from the beginning of .NET, as I had no idea it was so old, so it's clear that people wanted something like .NET Core from the beginning. It's confusing to me that Microsoft embarked on their Iron <x> project, or whatever it was called, to stress test the CLR, got F# out of the project, and then decided to sit on it. They have incorporated F# features into C#, but it is confusing to me that they saw the rising popularity of Python and decided to let it happen unchecked because C# will never be F# or a language that appeals to Python programmers.
    • lostmsu 6y ago
      It worked on Mono
  • altrunox 6y ago
    > which could have very well been the Python of today if they had paid any attention to it. Wow, really? I'm a big fan of Clojure and F#, but IDK, I think there is a bias against functional languages since they, IMO, are harder to start doing stuff.
• ExcavateGrandMa 6y ago
  Always thought python were a virus on windows... Still using python 2.7 with GNU/Linux in 2020... Okay!
• daxfohl 6y ago
  Ironically I had just stumbled across his LinkedIn profile for some reason last night and it was "retired, recruiters please get the memo" or something of that sort.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• pvitz 6y ago
  Miguel de Icaza: "The developer division at Microsoft now employs the language designers and contributors to Python, Java, JavaScript, Typescript, F# C#, C++. We just need some PHP, Rust and Swift magic to complete the picture."
  • daxfohl 6y ago
    And Delphi, VB, erm J#. Who is next? Ryan Dahl? Rob Pike? Larry Wall? Rich Hickey? DHH?
    • xtreak29 6y ago
      Larry Wall is at Craigslist
      • raverbashing 6y ago
        Seems appropriate Craigslist is still web 1.0 no?
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • vesh 6y ago
      Anders Hejlsberg was the chief architect of Delphi and he has been with Microsoft. He also managed to create C# and Typescript.
  • lostmsu 6y ago
    Can we skip PHP?
    • tored 6y ago
      No, what Microsoft should do is a WinRT language projection for PHP. Can you imagine the epicness?
      • oaiey 6y ago
• progfix 6y ago
  They really try to own everything Python related. I fear in 10 years the only viable way of using Python is on a Windows PC with Visual Studio or some other Microsoft owned IDE. You have to be logged in with your Microsoft account and everything you type will be processed and sent to a Microsoft data center.
  • jaywalk 6y ago
    Yeah, that's a valid fear since that's how it works today with C#, TypeScript, etc.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• pearjuice 6y ago
  Do you think Microsoft can convince him to drop the whitespace-as-syntax?
  • jedberg 6y ago
    Why? That's my most favorite part of Python. It makes the code so much more readable.
    • throw_m239339 6y ago
      Ruby manages to be much more readable without the white spaces. The fault with Ruby is its less useful stb lib and lesser performances.
      • orf 6y ago
        IMO Ruby is far, far less readable. Way more magic, endless ways to do the same things with slight differences (blocks, procs and lambdas) etc. Plus everyone mostly indents the code the same as Python anyway... so. Meh.
    • likpok 6y ago
      In the age of autoformatters it makes moving code around more painful. In C++ I can write some janky looking code and autoformat it into respectability. I can stop caring about whitespace entirely (while still producing readable results). In python I need to write correctly-indented code because the autoformatter can't figure out if the lack of indentation is meaningful or not.
      • jedberg 6y ago
        That seems like a silly argument. That would be like saying I don't like languages that require semicolons because then I have to remember to put in semicolons. The whitespace is part of the syntax. Just like in some languages putting a semicolon at the end is part of the syntax. And for the most part, your IDE will take care of whitespace anyway.
  • 6y ago
• jMyles 6y ago
  Is this a sign of the path for Python to finally become part of a typical web and consumer toolchain?
  • webmaven 6y ago
    > Is this a sign of the path for Python to finally become part of a typical web and consumer toolchain? Maybe? A likely first step would probably be something like an Electron fork/distro with Python built in, along the lines of the abandoned PythonWebkit: https://www.gnu.org/software/pythonwebkit/ https://www.gnu.org/software/pythonwebkit/
• laichzeit0 6y ago
  I’d really like to see move emphasis on types. Working in C# lately made me realize once again how shit it is writing non-trivial applications without strong type checking.
• salex89 6y ago
  Start with rewriting the Azure Python SDK.
  • existencebox 6y ago
    Honest response, if somewhat off-topic, since I can't pass this up: How could it be improved/what's been most painful for you? Full disclosure, I'm one of the <many> maintainers working on a subset of the Azure Python SDK. Currently, there actually _is_ a large-scale rewrite in progress to bring the various SDKs up to a consistent level of quality and python standards, since it's no secret the original batch of SDKs grew rather organically. As such, this is a VERY APT time to hear this sort of comment. (And yes, I'm taking it totally deadpan even if it wasn't necessarily meant that way :P) Do feel encouraged to file issues on the azure-sdk-for-python github as well as things come to mind; there are more formal triage processes there than "I happened to read this over lunch" :)
    • salex89 6y ago
      Hi, didn't expect such an offer, and the original comment is made in a more ranty tone than it should have, but let's try. Disclaimer: some (or maybe all?) of the things I'm mentioning here might be caused by the API itself, rather than the SDK. The order is in which it comes to mind, rather than importance. 1. Some kind of strongly typed errors. I've turned the SDK upside down, and the only error that seems to pop up 90% of the time is CloudError with CloudError data. So our SaaS application (which utilizes Azure IaaS heavily) has a bunch of regexes that parse the messages contained in CloudError and throw something from our domain. Wrapping SDK errors by the implementing clients is a smart thing to do, but not this way :). Some messages change from time to time, so we try to make our regexes more tolerant, but you get the picture. In general the error handling is very strange, a lot of low-level errors sometimes flowing into high-level calls. 2. Documentation with more examples. The easiest thing to do is sometimes looking at the API or CLI documentation, and try replicating it with the SDK. Parameters named differently etc. 3. For some reason the Storage API/SDK keeps changing and it's like it's from another world than compute and network, which look pretty similar. The storage portion is... wild. 4. Improved working with data disks. Updating the VM with an array of disks has shown bad performance (and Azure support helped us and said that it can't be improved because it's a cross-RM event) but also poor reliability. A separate set of methods to attach/detach disks to VMs would be great. 5. Because we heavily rely on asynchronous operations, what we usually do is make a raw HTTP request for an operation (like VM deployment), serialize it and store it, then after some time deserialize it and check if the operation is done. We do the same with hundreds of requests at the same time, being able to process a lot of cloud operations with not much resources on our side :) . It works, but I found the raw request and serialization is a bit clunky. We're also stuck with a couple of older SDK libraries because we've noticed the raw responses changed in the newer ones, so now we need efforts to find all of the differences and consolidate the serialization. For example, the headers have had multiple urls to check the deployment status, sometimes it's `async-url`, sometimes `location-url` etc. This probably isn't something the SDK is to blame, and this is a niche case, but serializable async responses would be nice :D . I have to commend the effort to break up the libraries from the original SDK into independent units. The versioning and dependency management became easier than with than one monolithic "4.0.0" schema. Maybe some of the things are out of scope and our use-case is disproportionately affected by some stuff, it's just my two cents. I'm less satisfied with Azure as a service, with its unreliability, sub-par support, idiosyncrasies and poor "hypervisor" performance, than the SDK, but it's the SDK that gets all the blame because it's the one we're interfacing with.
• lostmsu 6y ago
  If it is any indication, I have seen a spike in activity in IronPython3 repo [0], which previously looked abandoned. [0] https://github.com/IronLanguages/ironpython3 https://github.com/IronLanguages/ironpython3
  • 1-6 6y ago
    Yay, that's exciting. IronPython is necessary for scripting into my .Net/C#-based Revit but it's been stuck on IP2 forever.
• mikece 6y ago
  Is he being hired as a Distinguished Fellow on par with Miguel de Icaza or Anders?
  • adolfojp 6y ago
    Distinguished Engineer.
• mathgenius 6y ago
  He should make another language, surely that's a good retirement project? But he must call it "monte".
  • oaiey 6y ago
    Well Anders Heilsberg did exactly that from Pascal to C# (we gracefully ignore delphi and j++ in between). And the after C# he thought about Types in JavaScript. So, I do not know Guido, but with language designers you never know.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• Donckele 6y ago
  Good for you Guido!
• Deimorz 6y ago
  Huh. A throwaway account here on HN said that he was working at Microsoft 8 days ago, and I assumed they were wrong and thinking of Dropbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24983394 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24983394 Sorry, throwaway account! Apparently I was the one who was wrong!
• mips_avatar 6y ago
  Hopefully Microsoft will make Python a first class language internally. There's still far too much pressure to use C# for everything.
• 1-6 6y ago
  Update IronPython!!!
• 1-6 6y ago
  Classical Google lineage: "From 2005 to December 2012, he worked at Google, where he spent half of his time developing the Python language." Now he'll spend the rest of his life at Microsoft where he'll giveaway the Google-investment.
  • intricatedetail 6y ago
    And will never make as much money as Google or Microsoft out of his own work...
• tambourine_man 6y ago
  I really dislike Windows but Microsoft is doing everything it can lately to please developers. It's kind of working, I have to say.
  • ComputerGuru 6y ago
    Good news for you: .NET is really, truly free of Windows now (minus a UI answer).
    • tambourine_man 6y ago
      I know. I'm more happy with the Linux subsystem, a proper terminal, etc. That kind of move.
• intricatedetail 6y ago
  I hope that when Microsoft announced Windows 10 is the last one, it meant that the next will be Linux distribution able to run Windows apps better than Wine.
• breatheoften 6y ago
  Typescript for python?
• simonw 6y ago
  By far the biggest challenge for the Python ecosystem at the moment is how difficult it is for new users to get started, and how difficult it is for non-programmers to install tools written in Python. I'd be thrilled if Guido and Microsoft could help make this better!
  • Aperocky 6y ago
    Seriously? python is the easiest language to get started imo, absolute minimum requirements to get a script off. If non-programmers don't even want to run a few command in terminal like pip, why do they even want to start with python? The whole mentality is wrong.
    • bredren 6y ago
      I think maybe the bar is low for new to development experience across all fronts.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • simonw 6y ago
      I coach newcomers through setup once every few weeks and it is a nightmare. My aim is to get them to a state where they have a recent Python 3 on their path and they can create virtual environments for their projects which work in a predictable fashion. Inevitably they have already tried several different ways of installing Python and their system looks like this XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1987/ https://xkcd.com/1987/
  • int_19h 6y ago
    Take a look at Thonny. It's specifically designed for new programmers learning to code, and it bundles Python, so it's as close to one-click as it gets. https://thonny.org/ https://thonny.org/ As for installing apps written in Python - that's really down to the developer. A desktop app would normally just bundle Python for its own local use, similar to what Java apps do, and users are none the wiser - to them, it's just another installer. Some examples of such software on Windows include Calibre and CHIRP.
• betwixthewires 6y ago
  Am I the only person here that finds this somewhat terrifying?
  • medecau 6y ago
    The internet has a lot of people - you're probably not the only one scared. Care to explain what's worrying you though?
    • betwixthewires 6y ago
      EEE, github, windows 10, there's a lot of reasons to suspect that when Microsoft becomes directly involved in something it starts to become less useful to the user.
      • medecau 6y ago
        They hired Guido not the PSF. See: https://www.python.org/psf/sponsorship/sponsors/ https://www.python.org/psf/sponsorship/sponsors/
• taude 6y ago
  Fun historical story about Microsoft and Python. I worked there for a bit back in the mid-90s when they acquired a startup who's merchant server software was written in Python 1.12 or something. After Microsoft acquired, it became the engine for running ecommerce on MSN, and eventually became part of the SiteServer suite. The first port to run the software at Microsoft involved wrapping the Python code with a shim that exposed it as COM interfaces. I think it was eventually rewritten in C++ with ATL or something, but that was after I was no longer there. I still remember the first O'Reily pink Python book waiting on my desk back then when I joined.
• MadWombat 6y ago
  "Embrace, extend and extinguish" ™ I might need to branch out into other languages.
• threesmegiste 6y ago
  VBA out PYTHON in
  • kevas 6y ago
    hey hey hey...
  • ComputerGuru 6y ago
    MS has been very timidly introducing JS as a replacement.
• cryptica 6y ago
  Being retired is more boring than working for a giant bureaucratic corporation? He must have no imagination. When I had a day job at a big company, I would start working on open source in the afternoon as soon as I got home from work then I would stay up late working on it. The next day I would be tired and depressed that I would have to go to the office to work on some useless product and could not wait to go back home to continue the real work.
  • int_19h 6y ago
    Imagine if your day job at a big company (with the attendant salary and benefits) were to write open source? Speaking of Python in particular, there are people at Microsoft who get paid for, among other things, working on Python itself.
• shangxiao 6y ago
  I'm quietly hoping they'll ask him to work on a typescript-style of project that adds static typing as a layer on top of Python :)
• punnerud 6y ago
  Why do I get a bad feeling about Microsoft’s open source effort? And it is just getting stronger by the years.
• m0zg 6y ago
  Sources familiar with their thinking say Torvalds and Stallman will join Microsoft early next year. On a more serious note, I hope Van Rossum and Hejlsberg spend lots of quality time together and thoroughly pick each other's brains. This could result in great things in the programming language space.
  • SirYandi 6y ago
    You don't happen to have anywhere I could read about Stallman potentially joining Microsoft? I find it hard to believe he would.
    • m0zg 6y ago
      It was a joke. :-) Hence "sources familiar with their thinking" and "on a more serious note".
• qwerty456127 6y ago
  Hopefully he is going to make a really good port of Python to .Net.
• g051051 6y ago
  Man, there's so much stuff I want to do but don't have time for. I can't imagine retirement being so dull that I would go back to corporate work.
• JAlexoid 6y ago
  Maybe Python will get nice tooling.
• dynamite-ready 6y ago
  Why do I expect a type safe Python? I'm sure the product I'm imagining will also finally give a Python inspired/compatible language a decent module system, but I'm really not a big fan of the direction Microsoft is carving out for software development at large. I'll admit this post is presumptuous.
• nocman 6y ago
  clicked the link, got: "Something went wrong, but don’t fret — it’s not your fault." Took me a moment to realize that statement wasn't in reference to the statement "Guido van Rossum joins Microsoft".
• holografix 6y ago
  From now on known as Darth Rossum.
• cercatrova 6y ago
  Anyone using Pylance? It's a new Python language server implementation from Microsoft, and it's great. With 3.8's type hinting, you basically get a fully typed language, similar to what TypeScript did for JavaScript.
• drawkbox 6y ago
  Anyone remember Boo? [1] It was a Python language that ran on the CLR/DLR VM of .NET. It was used early on in Unity when it had C#, Javascript and Boo. It was the language that coroutines was first implemented in that used Python like generators behind it. There was also IronPython added when the DLR came out and is still updated to this day, latest works in .NET Core. [2] It would be fun for Python to have more focus with Microsoft tools and some things on Azure or even another Boo/IronPython like CLR/DLR virtual machine language or more focus on IronPython itself as well as more of CPython. Having Guido at Microsoft is awesome. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boo_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boo_(programming_language) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IronPython https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IronPython
  • int_19h 6y ago
    The problem with IronPython, and really most other alternative implementations of Python, is their inability to reuse native code packages, because CPython extension API is so low-level and tied to the VM's implementation details (and that cannot be easily changed now for backwards compatibility reasons). Such packages are fairly common, and if you take them all out, it significantly reduces the value of Python as an ecosystem.
    • redxdev 6y ago
      If you're using IronPython then you're probably just trying to embed a familiar scripting language into something, not trying to adopt the Python ecosystem. Besides, while you lose out on Python's native ecosystem you gain access to all of .net's.
      • int_19h 6y ago
        I'm not disputing that IronPython can be useful (although one also has to consider https://github.com/pythonnet/pythonnet https://github.com/pythonnet/pythonnet, which wraps CPython into an IronPython-like projection). But if it can't share the library ecosystem, it might as well be a different language for all practical purposes. And it turned out that there aren't enough people who were interested in a Python/.NET combo for its own sake, so it remained niche. Any new implementation of Python on top of .NET VM would likely get similar reception for all the same reasons.
• pcvarmint 6y ago
  http://hugunin.net/microsoft_farewell.html http://hugunin.net/microsoft_farewell.html
• mark-r 6y ago
  I wonder how working at Microsoft will turn out different than working at Google did?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• emdax 6y ago
  +1 for easy compiled binary in single file for all platforms. Bonus: Ensure support for CEF / PyWebView / WebGL on all platforms with secure IPC style bridge to the Python logic. Ultimate Combo: Smooth animated visual UI with secure connection to fun intuitive Python data services layer, all in one convenient compiled binary. ( Double bonus: Cython style transpilation step to protect source from tampering )
• habosa 6y ago
  You always think that if one of these people joins your company it won't matter to you. You won't see them in the halls and they probably won't do "normal" work. My wife used to work at Dropbox when Guido worked there. Apparently he was quite active on the company-wide mailing lists, even talking about mundane things like the food or parking. So MSFT employees you may get a chance to chat with Guido!
• b20000 6y ago
  python will end up like FORTRAN or COBOL