Guido van Rossum

Guido van Rossum is the Dutch programmer who created Python and guided its development for nearly three decades. He started the language as a side project over the Christmas holidays of 1989 at CWI, a research institute in Amsterdam. In February 1991, he posted the first public release to Usenet, an early internet discussion network. He named the language after the BBC comedy series Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

Van Rossum set the design priorities that still shape Python, above all the insight that code is read far more often than it’s written. As Python’s benevolent dictator for life (BDFL), he held the final say on every Python Enhancement Proposal (PEP).

He stepped down on July 12, 2018, after a contentious community debate over the assignment expression. Python replaced the BDFL model with an elected steering council, and van Rossum won a seat on the first one in 2019. Today he’s Python’s emeritus BDFL.

His day job stayed close to the language throughout. He worked at Google and Dropbox, then joined Microsoft in 2020 and its Faster CPython team, which made CPython about 25 percent faster in version 3.11. He retired from Microsoft in 2026 and stays active in the Python community.

History of Versions & Features

Course

A History of Python Versions and Features

Explore Python’s evolution from the 1990s to today with a brief history and demos of key features added throughout its lifetime.

basics python

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By Martin Breuss • Updated Aug. 30, 2026
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