Dutch computer scientist Guido van Rossum decided to take on a fun little side project over the Christmas break in 1989: building a new programming language. The one he used in projects at work was overcomplicated and clunky, but he thought he could use some of its better features to create something more forgiving, flexible, and easier to read.
Van Rossen developed his language mostly in his free time over the course of the next year, eventually deciding to name it "Python" after the British comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus, whose published scripts he was reading at the time of its implementation. In the years since, it's basically become the Holy Grail of general-purpose programming languages. Read more...
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