the python name

[Avi Gross]

[HUMOR for the ALERT]

The question that seems to come up too often about the python name is a
distraction. In particular, it is answered fairly prominently in many places
as just being a nonsensical name because a founder once liked a comedic
entity that chose an oddball name, so they did too.

But as languages develop and evolve, sometimes a name change may be a decent
idea. Perhaps version 4.0 should be renamed Guido so we can get more silly
questions.

There once was a trend to name languages after alphabetic symbols like C and
R. I shudder to think of the possibilities opened up as python embraced
Unicode and we now can select from many thousands of such singletons, most
of which nobody knows how to pronounce.

Imagine people developing languages like X and Y and over the years
enhancing them.

An Enhanced or Extended X, naturally, might be renamed EX.

With further Super new features (think super-symmetry in Physics) we would
have a Super Extended X, or SEX in brief.

Naturally, there may be a tendency to suggest that Y has some really neat
features and perhaps you should extend X in the direction of Y in a sort of
merger you might call SEXY.

OK, enough kidding around. But realistically, as I study the history of
Python including not just new features but deprecating and even removing old
features, and sometimes doing major rewrites of internal implementations and
adding brand new methods and ideas and endless modules and so on, I wonder
if my analogy is stretchable. Python may have begun as a snake of sorts able
to do a simple form of locomotion but over the years, it seems to have
re-grown 4 legs to be more like other reptiles and perhaps become like some
ancient dinosaurs and then kept changing as it started to walk on hind legs
and then the front legs morphed into wings so that modern python is not
limited to low-lying ground movement but can run and swim and even fly and
is now more of a bird. Given my current name, dare I say it seems sort of
AVIan?

Nah!