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I am surprised (and to some extent disappointed) that he did not know about trampolines, as it's common knowledge among language implementors (e.g. it's used ev

by magv 17y ago

I am surprised (and to some extent disappointed) that he did not know about trampolines, as it's common knowledge among language implementors (e.g. it's used everywhere to implement proper tail recursion for FFI calls). Somehow I though that being a language creator (or working on a compiler for a decade) implies unimaginable amount of knowledge...

eru 17y ago
Guido didn't even know about ephemeral and persistent data structures (see early comments at [1]). At least not by that name. But that's not a problem. Python, Perl etc have caught on, while Haskell has still a long way to go. [1] http://neopythonic.blogspot.com/2009/04/tail-recursion-elimination.html http://neopythonic.blogspot.com/2009/04/tail-recursion-elimi...
briancooley 17y ago
Doing a lot trumps knowing a lot, even when you make mistakes. It's amazing what GVR has accomplishled despite (apparently) being ignorant of things other language designers know about.
10ren 17y ago
Another point of view is to be disappointed in language theory, if one can be so incredibly successful without it. Reminds me of Edison.
- parenthesis 17y ago
  I think GvR's special expertise is more in the 'user-interface' of programming languages than in their implementation. The whole point of Python, really, is to put the former before the latter; which is exemplified in GvR's 'readable-stack-traces before fancy-features-in-the-implementation' reasoning on the present point.
  - 10ren 17y ago
    Even if you’re designing for professional programmers, in the end your programming language is basically a user-interface design. You will get much better results regardless of what you’re trying to do if you think of it as a user-interface design. Alan Kay http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523
Hexstream 17y ago
If he hadn't built so much, he might have had time to learn all that "theoretical" stuff (that can actually help in practice)...

by magv 17y ago

eru 17y ago

Guido didn't even know about ephemeral and persistent data structures (see early comments at [1]). At least not by that name. But that's not a problem. Python, Perl etc have caught on, while Haskell has still a long way to go. [1] http://neopythonic.blogspot.com/2009/04/tail-recursion-elimination.html http://neopythonic.blogspot.com/2009/04/tail-recursion-elimi...

briancooley 17y ago

Doing a lot trumps knowing a lot, even when you make mistakes. It's amazing what GVR has accomplishled despite (apparently) being ignorant of things other language designers know about.

10ren 17y ago

Another point of view is to be disappointed in language theory, if one can be so incredibly successful without it. Reminds me of Edison.

parenthesis 17y ago
I think GvR's special expertise is more in the 'user-interface' of programming languages than in their implementation. The whole point of Python, really, is to put the former before the latter; which is exemplified in GvR's 'readable-stack-traces before fancy-features-in-the-implementation' reasoning on the present point.
- 10ren 17y ago
  Even if you’re designing for professional programmers, in the end your programming language is basically a user-interface design. You will get much better results regardless of what you’re trying to do if you think of it as a user-interface design. Alan Kay http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523

Hexstream 17y ago

If he hadn't built so much, he might have had time to learn all that "theoretical" stuff (that can actually help in practice)...