Guido van Rossum is a Dutch programmer who created the Python programming language. In his own account of Python’s history, he explains that he began the project while working at CWI in Amsterdam on the Amoeba distributed operating system. As he put it, “My original motivation for creating Python was the perceived need for a higher level language in the Amoeba project,” because “the development of system administration utilities in C was taking too long.” He wanted a language to bridge the gap between C and the shell.
Van Rossum also recorded how he chose the name. Rather than overthink it, he wrote that he “picked the first thing that came to mind, which happened to be Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” a BBC comedy series he enjoyed. The name was meant to be short, catchy, and slightly irreverent, fitting a project he treated as a skunkworks effort. The language was not named after the snake.
For most of Python’s life, van Rossum acted as its final decision maker, a role the community came to call Benevolent Dictator For Life, or BDFL. He guided the language’s design and resolved disputes over its direction for nearly three decades.
In July 2018, after a contentious debate over a language proposal, van Rossum announced that he was stepping back. In his own message to Python’s committers, he wrote that he wanted to “remove myself entirely from the decision process,” adding that he was “basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL.” He declined to name a successor, leaving the community to design its own governance.