the python name

[Schachner, Joseph]

Python was started in the late 1980s by Guido Van Rossum, who (until quite recently) was the Benevolent Dictator for Life of Python.  His recent strong support of Type Annotation was what got it passed - and having to fight for it was what convinced him retire from the role of BDFL.  Anyway, at the time, he picked the name because he liked Monty Python's Flying Circus. At least, so I have read.  

If you don't know what Monty Python's Flying Circus was, I recommend looking for YouTube video snippets of it.  (You'll know you've found enough when you know the answer to "What's on the telly?" is "There's a penguin on the telly".)   

The name "Python" may not make sense, but what sense does the name Java make, or even C (unless you know that it was the successor to B), or Haskell or Pascal or even BASIC?  Or Caml or Kotlin or Scratch?  Or Oberon or R? Or Smalltalk, or SNOBOL?

By the way, C was 50 years old in 2018.  And C++ is still mostly backward compatible to C.  int, float, double and char are (still) not objects.   Strings and arrays are not classes (and so do not have iterators, unless you create them).  Until C++ 2014, there was no threading library as part of C++ standard. Even though now there is, it's seems to be to be old school.  Look at Go (language) to see how concurrency can be built into the language instead of made available for optional use. 

---- Joseph S.


-----Original Message-----
From: pritanshsahsani at gmail.com <pritanshsahsani at gmail.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, January 1, 2019 1:39 AM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: the python name

why did you kept this name? i want to know the history behind this and the name of this snake python.