Python and its Creator

Python has a fairly recent history too, as C++. And I'm impressed to say "fairly" because it was in 1992. Time is catching up. Anyway, this is a language created to minimize the effort of the programmer to write code and to read it¹. This was a problem faced in the beggining of the 90's, and the easyness of Python to be teached to kids, and maybe good timing to rise on the community, led it to success along the years. 

Until today, we can see the initial goal of the Python's creator, Guido van Rossum, still being reached: increase productivity¹. Even though the language is maintained by another group, without Guido. One of the best examples of this, in my point of view, are the current libraries for convolutional neural networks, a.k.a, deep learning nets. I was always afraid of start studying them, for I knew they were complex. But then, I saw how it was handled by Python, the high level, and the fear was gone. That's the power I think Python has.

There is an interview with Guido I found on YouTube (yes, I spend a lot of time on YouTube, so I'll cite it in this blog very often), where Guido says at 07:54 to 08:20:

"If I had been smart, I would have done somenthing like take the Perl interpreter and port that into Amoeba. And nobody would have heard of me again. But I was like... I felt if it was going to be a hobby project anyway, I might as well do something that I thought it was really fun."   

Creator of Python, Guido van Rossum | Oxford Union

That surprised me. It describes exactly what made me start pursuing my interest of working in the entertainment industry. And I'm starting it here.

Again, I think its great to see the contributors of computer science sharing the same time as us. Quoting another channel I like:

"What a time to be alive!"

Two Minute Papers

¹https://pt.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python

C++ and its Creator

I've been reading and watching videos about C++ to start my new page about it and I wanted to begin with a background history. I noticed that we study the creation but not the creator of it. Maybe because he or she lived a long time ago, there is not enough information of them, or we already have so much to learn that the author becomes irrelevant or only deserves a footnote. But in computer science, we can find some big contributors of this field alive. 

The first time I realized it, was at the SVR 2019 conference, which I participated to present my paper. There was an international guest for the main lecture (also the first of the event). It was very interesting, funny, and the audience made relevant questions in the end. Then I searched for his work to know more, and I found a wikipedia page telling that he was the author of the Perlin Noise, which I heard about in my class of Image Processing. Then I remembered that Ed Catmul, of the Catmul splines, is also alive. The same happens to the creator of C++, Bjarne Stroustrup, and until 2018, at least, he stills lecturing about his main creation (or the one that made him famous). 

Maybe you really don't mind about the people, but for me, this brings the creation closer to me and makes me more curious and inspired. Because people are the ones that make changes. 

If you're interested too, here is a video of Bjarne talking about the creation of C++:

The Design of C++, by Bjarne