Why Developers Still Flock To Python Guido Van Rossum On Readability

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” I am definitely not looking forward to an AI-driven future. I’m not worried about AI wanting to kill us all, but I see too many _people_ without ethics or morals getting enabled to do much more damage to society with less effort.” Q1. The “Zen of Python” emphasizes simplicity and readability. As AI and machine learning systems become increasingly complex, do you believe these core principles are more important than ever, or do they need to be re-evaluated for this new era? Guido van Rossum: Code still needs to be read and reviewed by humans, otherwise we risk losing control of our existence completely.

And it looks like models are also actually happiest coding in languages like Python that have a “humanist” philosophy — since LLMs are good at handling human language structures, and programming languages are in... And most LLMs have had great training in Python. Q2. When you first created Python, did you ever envision it becoming the dominant language for scientific computing and artificial intelligence? What factors do you believe were most critical to its unexpected success in these fields? Guido van Rossum shares insights on Python's growth, AI relevance, and its evolution from a hobby project to a key programming language.

When we presented this year's Octoverse findings to Guido van Rossum, the visionary behind Python, he expressed a genuine sense of astonishment. As of August 2025, TypeScript has surged ahead of Python to claim the title of the most utilized programming language on GitHub, marking a significant shift in language popularity not seen in over ten... Despite this, Python has still experienced a remarkable 49% year-on-year growth in 2025, cementing its status as the go-to language for AI, scientific research, and educational purposes among developers globally. Guido shared, "I was very surprised by that number," pointing out how these findings contrasted with other popularity metrics like the TIOBE Index. To delve deeper, we engaged Guido in an insightful discussion about the origins of Python, its ever-growing influence, and the myriad choices that have transformed it from a mere "hobby project" into a cornerstone... Guido van Rossum is the inventor of the Python programming language.

He initially worked on the ABC language at CWI (the National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science in the Netherlands), where he learned language design and implementation. Guido then used those insights to create Python in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He has since served at various organizations, including Dropbox, while continuing to guide Python’s evolution. If you’re listening to this episode as a beginner, here are a few points to help you follow along: "Without having been on the ABC team for four years, I would never have been able to do that [create Python]." -- Guido van Rossum "If it hadn’t been open source, people wouldn’t have been interested in picking it up." -- Guido van Rossum

"By the time we realized how massive Python's popularity was, there was no going back on Python 3." -- Guido van Rossum Python, one of the most popular and versatile programming languages today, owes its existence to Guido van Rossum. Guido's vision and hard work have led to the creation of a language that is not only powerful but also incredibly accessible to programmers of all levels. In this blog post, we will explore Guido van Rossum, the fundamental concepts behind his creation, how to use Python, common practices, and best practices. Guido van Rossum was born in 1956 in the Netherlands. He started his career as a computer scientist at the Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam.

Guido was influenced by languages like ABC and Modula-3 but wanted to create a language that was more practical and easy to use. In the late 1980s, he began working on Python as a hobby project. Over the years, Python has evolved significantly under his leadership, and Guido became known as the "Benevolent Dictator for Life" (BDFL) of the Python community, a title that gave him the final say in... Although he stepped down from the BDFL role in 2018, his influence on Python remains profound. One of the core concepts behind Python is its emphasis on simplicity and readability. Guido believed that code should be easy to understand, even for someone who is not a professional programmer.

Python uses indentation to define code blocks instead of using curly braces or other symbols like some languages. For example: In this simple for loop, the indentation clearly shows the block of code that will be executed for each iteration. Python is an interpreted language. This means that the Python interpreter reads and executes the code line by line. It doesn't need to be compiled into machine code before running, which makes development faster.

You can write a Python script and run it immediately without going through a separate compilation step. When we shared this year’s Octoverse data with Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python, his first reaction was genuine surprise. While TypeScript overtook Python to become the most used language on GitHub as of August 2025 (marking the biggest language shift in more than a decade), Python still grew 49% year over year in... “I was very surprised by that number,” Guido told us, noting how this result is different from other popularity trackers like the TIOBE Index. To learn more, we sat down with Guido for a candid conversation about Python’s roots, its ever-expanding reach, and the choices—both big and small—that have helped turn a one-time “hobby project” into the foundation... Python is a high-level, general-purpose programming language created by Guido van Rossum in 1991.

It’s designed to be readable, intuitive, and easy to learn—using clean indentation instead of braces, friendly error messages, and a massive standard library. Python, known for its simplicity, readability, and versatility, has become one of the most popular programming languages today. Its origins can be traced back to the late 1980s when a Dutch programmer named Guido van Rossum set out to create a language that was easy to read and write. In December 1989, Guido van Rossum, then a researcher at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in the Netherlands, started working on a successor to the ABC programming language. The aim was to develop a language that would be capable of handling both system-level programming as well as providing a simple and expressive scripting interface. Guido van Rossum had a clear vision for Python - to create a language that prioritized code readability, simplicity, and developer productivity.

He believed that code should be easy to write and understand, emphasizing the importance of code readability as a means of reducing the complexity of software development. To demonstrate the practicality of Python’s design philosophy, let’s consider a real-world example. Imagine you are building a web application that requires data validation. In Python, you can use regular expressions to match and validate patterns in strings. Here’s an example: In the above code, the regular expression pattern r'^[\w\.-]+@[\w\.-]+\.\w+$' is used to validate email addresses.

Python’s readability allows developers to understand this validation logic intuitively, even without deep experience in regular expressions.

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