In the late 1980s, computers were buzzing all around, programmers were wrestling with clunky programming languages, and one guy in Amsterdam was getting a little frustrated. It was Guido van Rossum.
Guido van Rossum was employed at a research institute where he was using a programming language called ABC. ABC had some neat concepts as it was accessible for beginners and was sweet and clean, but it was also inflexible.
Try to extend it? No chance!
Try connecting it with system calls? Nope.
Guido appreciated the spirit of ABC, but he wanted something more useful, something with enough flexibility to work through real-life problems.
So, during the Christmas break in 1989, while most were all about unwrapping gifts or singing Christmas carols, Guido decided to treat himself with a new programming language.
Guido wanted it to be:
- As easy to read as plain English,
- As fun as ABC, but not as restrictive,
- Powerful enough to connect to systems. And of course, because Guido had a ridiculous sense of humor, he named it after the British comedy ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus.’ (Yup, Python has nothing to do with 🐍 snakes!).
At first, it was named Monty Python, but it didn’t sound quite right, so Guido shortened it to Python.
A few months later, this little holiday side project began to grow legs. By 1991, Python had an official release, 0.9.0, with core features like functions, exceptions, and even modules.
It quickly gained some following. Programmers were loving it. It was easy without being trivial. It was flexible without being unstructured. Other languages made you feel like you were solving complicated math puzzles. Python made you feel like you were well… talking to computers.
Eventually, what started as a Christmas experiment by Guido van Rossum became one of the most beloved programming languages on the planet. From powering Instagram to helping in NASA space missions and AI, Python slithered into almost every corner of technology.
In 2024, it became the most popular programming language worldwide. (Though some surveys still place JavaScript just ahead)
The best part? It never lost that human touch Guido was going for. Python wasn’t meant to make machines happy. It was meant to make programmers happy.
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