Tim Peters, co-architect of early Python and author of the Zen of Python, dies at 74
Tim Peters has died
Tim Peters, who became Python's second real user after Guido van Rossum and served as a PSF director from 2001 to 2014, has died at 74. A former Cray Research compiler writer and Dragon Systems speech-recognition engineer, he acted as early Python's gatekeeper and polisher, pushing back against the verbosity and complexity of Java and Microsoft languages. He wrote the Zen of Python, visible today via "import this."
He was always gentle and patient and matter-of-fact, preferring to use humor and warmth rather than bile and authority as the currency in which he dealt.
- w-m
$ python -c "import this"
The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters
Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!
- leoc
Among his various other works, it was Tim Peters along with Gary Robinson who turned pg's "A Plan for Spam" essay into the successful SpamBayes program: https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6467 .
(EDIT: Robert Woodhead apparently shares in the credit, too: https://www.ceas.cc/papers-2004/136.pdf https://ceas.cc/papers-2004.html . Apparently Rob Hooft was another implementor? I can't find a good source for that though.)
- lumpa
Once upon a time I used to read all python-dev posts and bugs.python.org issues, so I got to follow (and get a feeling of knowing) these people I admired working and discussing together. Tim was always a favorite.
Another thing that made me feel close to him was his work on the Python Cookbook 2nd Edition, in which he (and other big names in the community) delightfully talks the reader through intricacies and insights of programming, "We read Knuth so you don't have to".
Watching Tim do his thing was a pleasure. He'd go from long, deep technical dives (that he'd make as approachable as possible) into comic relief and human connection in the fractional wink of an eye.
The brief interactions we had will always be cherished as high points in my Pythonista trajectory.
One favorite of mine was this response: https://www.python.org/doc/humor/#id15. I also like https://www.python.org/doc/humor/#id19 very much.
- asalahli
Yesterday, out of nowhere I remembered Zen of Python and looked it up to refresh my memory. Prior to that I hadn't known who the author was, so when I saw Tim Peter's name I had a moment of realization that it's the same person who invented Timsort and the same person who was banned from python forums a few years ago for opposing arguing agains bylaw changes.
It feels surreal to learn about his death just the next day. RIP
- ofek
Tim was one of the people who contributed to my love of the Python language eventually expanding to its entire community.
He was always so willing to foster discussion that nearly every interaction resulted in an improved understanding of some topic and a shared eagerness to try or learn more out something tangential that came up via digression. I never knew how many types of voting systems there were nor how extensively they are researched! He also reached out about a comment [0] I made a few years ago which made me feel less discouraged and more welcome.
Tim's writing style was greatly appreciated by myself and many others. What he had to say was often lengthy, to address reader assumptions or some nuance, but was written with such a jovial tone that it was rarely dull or inaccessible.
RIP Tim