Guido van Rossum

Van Rossum grew up in the Netherlands; he recalled that at age 10 his parents gave him an electronics kit made by PhilipsPhilipsPhilips (Koninklijke Philips N.V.) is a health technology company founded in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, in 1891 by Gerard Philips and his father, Frederik Philips, and now headquartered in Amsterdam; it was long known for lighting and consumer electronics such as the compact cassette and the CD, and was one of TSMC’s founding shareholders.Open the full entry.⁠[1]

In 1982 he earned a master’s degree in mathematics and computer science from the University of Amsterdam.⁠[2]

While studying, from 1977 to 1982 he worked part-time as a systems programmer at SARA, an Amsterdam computing center.⁠[3]

In late 1982 he joined CWI, the Amsterdam research institute, working on the teaching language ABCABCABC (American Broadcasting Company) is an American commercial broadcast television network. It grew out of NBC’s Blue radio network, took its name after becoming independent in 1943, developed into a national television network after merging with United Paramount Theatres in 1953, was acquired by Capital Cities in 1985, and has been owned by The Walt Disney Company since 1996. With CBS and NBC it is one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks, and it is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry; he wrote that “ABC gave me the key inspiration for Python, Amoeba the immediate motivation.”⁠[4]

From 1986 to 1991 he worked on the Amoeba project at CWI; the project needed a higher-level language than C for system administration utilities, and the Bourne shell was unsuitable, which became the direct reason for designing a new language.⁠[4]

In December 1989 he was looking for a “hobby” programming project to keep him occupied during the week around Christmas and decided to write an interpreter for a new scripting language, named after Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the British comedy troupe he was a fan of.⁠[5]

On February 20, 1991, Python 0.9.0 was released to the Usenet newsgroup alt.sources; version 1.0.0 followed on January 26, 1994.⁠[6]

From 1991 to 1995 he worked in CWI’s multimedia group; in 1995 he issued the Python Reference Manual, the Python Tutorial and two other documents as CWI reports.⁠[7]

In 1995 he moved to the United States.⁠[8]

That April he joined CNRI, a nonprofit research lab in Reston, Virginia.⁠[9]

On April 18, 1995, the interim board of the Python Software Association held its first meeting at CNRI, and the notes named him the “first interim benevolent dictator-for-life,” the origin of the BDFL title.⁠[10]

In 1999, as principal investigator for CNRI, he submitted a revised “Computer Programming for Everybody” proposal to DARPA, aiming to enable all users to program through education and software; the project received funding only for its first year, through October 2000.⁠[11]

In early 2000 he took his team, known as PythonLabs, to the California startup BeOpen.com, then to Digital Creations, later renamed Zope Corporation; in 2001 they created the nonprofit Python Software Foundation.⁠[9]

Python 2.0 was released on October 16, 2000.⁠[6]

In 2005 he joined Google as a Senior Staff Engineer.⁠[8]

At Google he built the code review tools Mondrian and Rietveld and worked on App Engine and its NDB database library.⁠[3]

In 2006 the ACMAustralian Community MediaAustralian Community Media (ACM) is an Australian regional and rural news publishing group with more than 100 brands, including The Canberra Times; in 2019 Nine sold it to a company controlled by interests associated with Antony Catalano and Thorney Investment Group.Open the full entry named him a Distinguished Engineer.⁠[2]

Python 3.0 was released on December 3, 2008.⁠[6]

In January 2009 he started “The History of Python” blog, describing design rules including “Borrow ideas from elsewhere whenever it makes sense” and “Errors should not be fatal.”⁠[12]

December 7, 2012, was his last day at Google; he announced he would start at Dropbox in January 2013 as a full-time software engineer focused on the company’s use of Python.⁠[13]

On April 27, 2016, invited by the Dutch mission in San Francisco to speak at a King’s Day event, he said he had married at 45, had a son, had lived in the United States for over 20 years and remained a permanent resident.⁠[1]

His wife is from Texas, and the family lives in Silicon Valley.⁠[8]

In 2018 the Computer History Museum named him a Fellow “For the creation and evolution of the Python programming language and for leadership of its community.”⁠[2]

On July 12, 2018, after PEP 572 was approved, he posted “Transfer of power” to the python-committers list, writing, “I would like to remove myself entirely from the decision process,” and said he would remain an ordinary core developer but would not appoint a successor.⁠[14]

On November 22, 2018, he appeared on the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast in an episode titled “Guido van Rossum: Python” (later numbered episode 6), interviewed as the creator of Python.⁠[15]

In October 2019 he retired from Dropbox after six and a half years; there he worked on the type checker mypy and set in motion the conversion of Dropbox’s server code from Python 2 to Python 3.⁠[16]

On November 12, 2020, he announced that he had come out of retirement and joined MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft is a technology company founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, with businesses spanning Windows, Microsoft 365, Azure, enterprise software, artificial intelligence, gaming and devices.Open the full entry’s Developer Division to work on making Python better.⁠[17]

On November 26, 2022, he appeared on episode 341, “Python and the Future of Programming,” discussing CPython, code readability, the speed of Python 3.11, type hinting and mypy, the Global Interpreter Lock, Python 4.0, the BDFL role and GitHub Copilot.⁠[18]

In 2026 he left his role as a Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft to retire again.⁠[8]

His honors include the 1999 Dr. Dobb’s Journal Excellence in Programming Award, the 2002 Free Software Foundation Award, CWI’s first Dijkstra Fellowship in 2019 and the 2023 NEC C&C Prize.⁠[3]

As of October 2026 his homepage describes him as the creator and “emeritus BDFL” of Python and states, “I am permanently retired”; in 2026 he began publishing a series of interviews with key Python developers from the language’s first 25 years.⁠[19]

Personal website: Public link: https://gvanrossum.github.io/ (opens in a new window)⁠[19]

X: Public account: https://x.com/gvanrossum (opens in a new window)⁠[19]

Python: Official website: https://www.python.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[19]