The Making of Python
A Conversation with Guido van Rossum
by Bill Venners, January 2003 Summary (from the website):
Python creator Guido van Rossum talks with Bill Venners about Python's history, the influence of the ABC language, and Python's original design goals. Guido van Rossum is the author of Python, an interpreted, interactive object-oriented programming language. In the late 1980s, Van Rossum began work on Python at the National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science in the Netherlands, or Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica (CWI) as it is known in Dutch. Since then, Python has become very popular among developers, who are attracted to its clean syntax and reputation for productivity.
In this interview, which is being published in weekly installments, Van Rossum gives insights into Python's design goals, the source of Python programmer productivity, the implications of weak typing, and more. In this first installment, Van Rossum describes Python's history, major influences, and design goals.
Read the full conversation "The Making of Python"
A Brief Timeline
There is a timeline of Python written by Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python. He should know best of all people, when and how things began. He writes in his blog at blogspot.com:Visit "A Brief Timeline of Python" at blogspot.com.The development of Python occurred at a time when many other dynamic (and open-source) programming languages such as Tcl, Perl, and (much later) Ruby were also being actively developed and gaining popularity. To help put Python in its proper historical perspective, the following list shows the release history of Python.