🤔 Guido Van Rossum and A Bat Ray. I Was Really Worried!

Guido van Rossum doesn’t have to be introduced to a narrow group of tech geeks with me included. He’s the creator of Python. But we didn’t hear from him for a while, so I’ve checked what Guido is up to!

Python Rocked The Blue Rock

Python is one of the most popular programming languages for a very specific reason. It allows people from different fields to process data without having to resort to programmers.

Even in geology. Jack Maughan is a senior data scientist at Datarock based in Adelaide, South Australia.

The company is offering a cloud platform that analyses photos of rock cores and provides actionable insights about rocks collected.

Jack Maughan states:

The possibilities of using python in geoscience are endless. You can graph, model, analyse and plot all kinds of geophysical, geological or geochemical data, you just have to learn it first.

The ease of use on a par with versatility rocked not only geology but also data science in general and computer science specifically.

I was able to write this article, because people read it on Medium

Here’s an example of a short Python app. It’s way more readable than the same code written in, say, Rust programming language:

n = int(input('Type a number, and its factorial will be printed: '))
if n < 0:
    raise ValueError('You must enter a non-negative integer')
factorial = 1

for i in range(2, n + 1):
    factorial *= i

print(factorial)

The aim to provide a clear and easy to read code was always the motto for Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python who stated:

Code is read much more often than it is written, and thus the ability to read code is more important than the ability to write code.

It took many years of consistent work to provide a language fulfilling this premise on every step. Python first appeared in 1991. Today, after 33 years of development, Python is stable, predictable and well designed.