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Microsoft Programming Python

What Will Happen After Python Creator Guido Van Rossum Joins Microsoft? (thenewstack.io) 108

Posted by EditorDavid from the where-do-you-want-to-go-today? dept.
Programming columnist Mike Melanson assesses the news that Guido Van Rossum, the creator of the Python programming language, has come out of retirement to join Microsoft's developer division: The news brought a flurry of congratulations and feature requests, though a few of the suggested features indeed, already exist. Others still were met with informative responses that make the resulting threads worth a perusal, especially if you're looking for a quick "who's who" on Twitter for the world of programming languages. Microsoft's Miguel de Icaza pointed out that this addition adds to the company's now growing list of language designers and contributors:

"The developer division at Microsoft now employs the language designers and contributors to Python, Java, JavaScript, Typescript, F# C#, C++. We just need some PHP, Rust and Swift magic to complete the picture."

 [Microsoft senior software engineer Kat Marchán added "We actually have some early ex-moz Rust people too!"]

So, what can we expect from all of this? Is it a corporate takeover of open source, as some further down in the long list of replies always seem to suggest? Or is Microsoft planning the Frankenstein of all languages, with a little bit of this, a little bit of that? In all likelihood, you Python developers using Microsoft products probably have some good features to look forward to in the near future, and that's that, but there's always lingering fears...especially when it comes to Microsoft. As van Rossum suggests, stay tuned.
After Slashdot's earlier story, long-time reader alexgieg posted his own theory: "Several months ago the Excel folk within Microsoft asked users whether they'd like to have Python as an alternative scripting language in Office. Support for that was overwhelming, but nothing more was said on the matter since then. I guess this is Microsoft's answer."
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What Will Happen After Python Creator Guido Van Rossum Joins Microsoft? More

What Will Happen After Python Creator Guido Van Rossum Joins Microsoft?

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  • Worst case scenario (Score:3)

    by aglider ( 2435074 ) on Saturday November 14, 2020 @02:39PM (#60724534) Homepage

    Is a fork and that will be it.
    Like mysql.

    • Worst case scenario is factious forking-and reforking and gradual dissolution. See: java.

    • Like mysql.

      Or Python 2/3? ;)

      • Re:Worst case scenario (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Saturday November 14, 2020 @04:45PM (#60724844)

        Ya, I would not mind seeing Microsoft giving him a lecture on how not to annoy of your customer by breaking compatibility. Open source or academic programs versus commercial ones often have a difference in that the commercial ones have constraints related to the customers and users: fix bugs, make it work, maintain the old versions, don't break the compatibility when customers ugprade, etc.

        That is the focus for a company is always on the customer and not on the developer getting to add their favorite features and ideas. The drawback is that at a company you don't have the freedom to just rip code out and rewrite it just because you think it looks bad or that you can do better. The cost needs to be justified.

        • Yeah, I've been a long time user of .Net and I really have to say that it's really nice that very little has broken over the years. I've going from .Net all the way up to 4.7 or whatever they are at now with a very large project and don't remember any major thing they changed that cause incompatibility or problems. Also, so much consistency across the framework. Compared to a lot of open source tools I've used, it just a joy to work with.

          • Iâ(TM)ve been in and out of .NET since 2005, and while you are correct in one aspect, there have been feature breaks and incompatibility issues over the years. If you were actively paying your tech debt with every release, you avoided most of the problems. If you let your code sit and grow miss, the point at which you do pick it up, expect that your tech debt will have increased exponentially. Pick up just about any C or C++ code and this will rarely be an issue. Even Java has reached a level of maturi
        • Best case scenario - python 4 - now with braces instead of white space being significant.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xonen ( 774419 )

      Is a fork and that will be it.
      Like mysql.

      Worst case are slight platform- and version dependent incompatibilities, 'enhancing' feature creep and tiny edge case scenarios that almost never occur according to microsoft and should not affect the normal user and only support and bug- and security for supported versions and platforms.

      Then again, i'm totally willing to give van Rossum the benefit of the doubt. Let's see if the new MS can resist being the new Oracle.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by cats-paw ( 34890 )

      thank you, this helped me feel a little bit better.

      Nothing good is going to happen for sure.

      However, if it gets forked, Microsoft will spend a lot of time and effort delegitimizing the free software version, and that could definitely cause problems.

      I'm _extremely_ surprised he went to work for M$. He doesn't need to, I'm sure financially he can retire and do what he wants, and there's an excellent chance that M$'s involvement in Python could cause problems.

      I do wonder what M$'s strategy is. It's not clear

  • What (Score:3)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Saturday November 14, 2020 @02:57PM (#60724572) Journal

    So, what can we expect from all of this? Is it a corporate takeover of open source, as some further down in the long list of replies always seem to suggest? Or is Microsoft planning the Frankenstein of all languages, with a little bit of this, a little bit of that?

    Microsoft has been hiring good programming language designers for two decades now. They've built a pretty decent ecosystem from it (although the community around it sucks, and it's still too closed source. Yeah I know Mono is open but it's not great).

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Slackus ( 598508 )
      What are you talking about? The entire .net framework has been open source for a long time now https://github.com/dotnet/core [github.com] and it runs on Windows, Linux, Mac So has typescript https://github.com/microsoft/T... [github.com] So has Roslyn https://github.com/dotnet/rosl... [github.com] Try to keep up...

  • What will happen? Easy:

    Embrace .
    Extend.
    Extinguish.

    Time to switch back too perl.

    • Personally, I'd rather shoot myself in the foot than switch back to Perl.
      • Why? Perl has it's issues, but Python's structure is completely insane! I'd rather write pure assembler then touch Python.

        • If you actually had once tried Python, you would not make such silly comments.

          • I have tried python, both 2.7 and 3.x series.

            The basic programing constructs are tossed a side and replaced with nonsense! Any compitent C/C++/C# programmer would be driven to insanity.

            In fact, I have never met a programmer who likes any of the C family of languages and has a hard on for Python.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by gweihir ( 88907 )

              Well, after trying a lot of things, I have now standardized on Python with C modules for the heavy lifting where needed. I guess somebody like me does not fit in your world...

            • Many I know migrated to Python.
              And bottom line it is a job, not a language.
              If the job is in Python you use Python, is it a different language, you use that one.

              I personally find Python the most simplest language to learn, and the most elegant. (And I'm actually not even using it).

              • Actually this right here is the problem.

                Someone without any programming experience picks up python and uses it for a bit, and all is fine and dandy, so they get a job that requires python and they get hired, everything is cool for a while until the project requires some C'ish language, now they have to learn C, problem is they use what they know (its what we all do) and because python doesnt play with memory the person assumes that the C'ish languages memory safe off the hop. This is why we need languages l

                • I am willing to bet, if you gave even the best python guys a DOS terminal (with no memory protection) and only a C compiler they would overwrite the memory contents of other programs more then if they really got to understand C.
                  Obviously. But that is completely irrelevant. Python is not used for stuff like this. And C is no longer used like that either. On top of that basically every OS has separated memory for each process, so the whole argument make no sense. Unless you work in some embedded environment o

                  • It is relevant, people who don't understand what there doing shouldnt be programming, would you trust someone who doesnt know brake systems to change your brakes? I mean who cares if they get air in the brake lines, its irrelevant right?

                    • Python programmers usually know how to program.
                      No idea where your irrational Python hatred comes from or why you think a programmer using a certain language is bad in programming, because otherwise he would use a more difficult language which makes him less than 10% as effective - what is your point? Why the funk would I program anything in C that can be done in a different language in 10% of the time - and is portable about OSes without "even thinking about portability"?

                    • You don't need to code in C, you need to understand why C does what it does,C is considered the fundamentals of programming for a reason, I don't need to code in Assembler (I do sometimes) but most of that knowledge is used when I look at the output of my C/C++/C# programs and say now why did the compiler think it was okay to do this, when I wanted to do this instead (x86 SIMD instructions come to mind here)

                      Python like Perl is easy to learn, the problem with it is, it's easy to learn, I don't care what lan

                    • C is considered the fundamentals of programming for a reason
                      No, it is not :P

                      Perhaps you should once study computer science in an university?

                    • I did, about oh I donno 20 years ago. When C was still the standard. C teaches a person more about the system then any other compiled based language. Most system programmers cut their teeth on something like perl, or pascal then learn a lot in C/C++ and either stay or move on to C#, not learning C makes dumpster fire coders (script kiddies)

                    • C teaches a person more about the system then any other compiled based language.
                      No it does not. What would you learn in C, that you would not learn in Pascal? Modula or even Lisp? Seriously?

                      not learning C makes dumpster fire coders (script kiddies)
                      No it does not. Why would it?

                    • C doesn't baby you hardly at all, it doesn't really support object but you can kinda use structs as objects

                      Lisp is a family of computer languages with automatic memory management, this sien't going to teach you jack about how your CPU, Memory or I/O cards work

                      Pascal is dead thanks to Borland's obsession with GUI's, but still if were alive today its still too basic to truly understand exactly what is going on, its light on details and high on verbosity.

                      Modula is a neat idea, but its inherently broken, Since

                    • Modula/Modula II does not support anything object oriented.

                      Pascal and C are both the same, just different syntax.

                      You do not even half you think you know about programming.

                      Lisp is a family of computer languages with automatic memory management, this sien't going to teach you jack about how your CPU, Memory or I/O cards work
                      Why not? Seriously? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

                    • I don't know half?

                      Modula3 exists! Annnnd drum roll! It' object oriented!!!! For someone playing king compiler, I beleave it is you who is uninformed!

                      Pascal is not the same as C, show function call/jump tables in Pascal... Oh wait their are none, yea that looks the same, yep C has tons of verbosity like Pascal, side by side they look the same to you? Really? Someone needs their eyes checked! And pointers, Pascal's hidden booboo, yea those dont hold a candle to C's, but you know tomato tomahto right? Hows bra

                    • Modula 3 is not object oriented, it is object based.
                      And we talked about "Modula" aka: Modula 1.

                      Pascal is not the same as C, show function call/jump tables in Pascal...
                      Only the source code is different. The compiled assembly/machine code is the same.
                      show function call/jump tables in Pascal
                      Such a term does not exist in either C or Pascal or any other language.

                      Do you mean "jump tables" for switch/case statements? They are the same in both languages. Or do you mean vtbles for virtual function calling in C++? N

  • No real plan (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 1s44c ( 552956 ) on Saturday November 14, 2020 @03:08PM (#60724614)

    I suspect Microsoft has no real plan here. In the past Microsoft spent significant amounts of money on research and development that never led to products. Seemingly the objective was to keep skilled people on payroll and under control because these people would be a threat to Microsoft if they worked for the competition.

    Python is a finished product and it's open source and managed by other people now. I don't think we need to fear that this is an attack on python.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I really hope Office adopts Python scripting.

      One of the last big compatibility issues with spreadsheets (of all kinds, not just Microsoft) is scripting.

      MS uses VB Script, Google uses JavaScript, Libre Office supports different JavaScript and Python and their own BASIC.

      • Python is fashionable, Visual Basic is not.

        Microsoft has been pushing hard to replace VBA with JavaScript. But the key thing to understand is that is nothing to do with replacing End Ifs with (ugly) {}s. Instead they have completely different environments.

        VBA runs on the local computer. It is tightly integrated with Excel and easy for END USERS to deploy. They actually did a very good job back in the 1990s. And lots of end users do use it, for better or worse.

        JavaScript runs on the Web. It requires s

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It's not so much the language as the APIs that are the real issue. If there was a standard API, like the HTML DOM, then we could have truly portable spreadsheets.

        • Sorry, you are very mistaken.
          You can start any JavaScript program either with a double click, if your environment is set up correctly, or from command line, or via a helper script that you can double click.
          No web server needed at all (and no browser).

          • You are talking about the programming language, which is uninteresting.

            What counts here is using it with Excel.

            There are some easy-to-use modes, but they do not work very well.

            And nobody uses JavaScript because it is a good language. They use it *because* it works in web browsers.

    • Microsoft has been consistently evil for 30+ years. They have not changed at all. They are in Extend at the moment with WSL, etc. It's a shame we have no real DoJ.

      This is essentially virtue signaling with money.

  • One big change (Score:5, Funny)

    by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Saturday November 14, 2020 @03:23PM (#60724654)

    The most obvious change will be with Python's most controversial feature: whitespace.

    Since stakeholders clearly have never unified behind tabs and/or spaces, Guido and Microsoft will now be deprecating those in favor of "Microsoft Smart Indents (TM)", which will be coded with the newly allocated codepoint U+F48EA.

    One interesting side effect is that going forward, snippets of Python code posted here on Slashdot will look the following:

    def foo(x):
    â(TM)gzx == 3:
    â(TM)gzâ(TM)gzprint("X is 3")
    â(TM)gzelse:
    â(TM)gzâ(TM)gzprint("X is not 3")

  • Sorry, just my nostalgia coming out. Heh.

  • Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together – mass hysteria.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday November 14, 2020 @03:38PM (#60724690)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Frankenlanguage? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Or is Microsoft planning the Frankenstein of all languages, with a little bit of this, a little bit of that?

    Moth [reddit.com] tries to kind of do that by being a universal syntax instead of a universal language. It wants to be "the XML of" imperative/Turing-Complete programming, allowing domain-specific sub-languages based on the syntax, and perhaps growing a "kit" of ready-made parts for roll-your-own languages to skip parsing concerns. It's an interesting goal even if you don't like this attempt.

    In some ways, the res

  • They'll make some language with syntax vaguely like Python but entirely different structure and semantics, and call it P#.

  • They've hired so many experts now. Microsoft must have a different recollection than I do of that aphorism about many cooks making a broth.

  • ...scripting language! :P

  • Visual Python

    • P#.

      But, in all seriousness... the guy has pretty much completely removed himself from any leadership position in python development. So why should his hiring by Microsoft affect the language's further development at all?

  • What Will Happen After Python Creator Guido Van Rossum Joins Microsoft?

    Visual Studio has been stuck on version 3.7 for a while. [github.com]

  • When the expert gets hired by Microsoft they get "neutralized". Their output will be controlled by Microsoft. Microsoft's duty is to its share holders is to make $. It will be the embrace extend extinguish story
  • the all new improved proprietary Microsoft Mython interpreter that will be woven into Python creating the new superior Mython scripting language.

  • open source developer becomes a snake and joins Microsoft's utterly evil corporation.

  • Microsoft has mandatory Diversity & Inclusion training. One of the first things he'll need to take is a seminar on how his unconscious bias makes him a racist and a sexist. There are 9 more sessions that are mandatory after this one.
  • Microsoft once had "IronPython" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] But probably they'll wine, dine, debrief, and dismiss Guido and create a Mython, Microsoft's much new and improved Python, much like J++ was a much improved Java. Guido might keep in mind this tale of Microsoft "embracing" https://keivan.io/the-day-appg... [keivan.io] Evil is as evil does. JoshK.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday November 15, 2020 @02:53AM (#60726242)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mridoni ( 228377 )

      You have to customize a few things here or there, mostly for aesthetic reasons (fonts, etc.), but otherwise Notepad++ works very well under Wine, including many of its plugins.

  • Guido stepped down from being BDFL of the Python project. It's governed without him. I wish him well and hope he can bring some cool new things to Microsoft's platforms

    Personally, I'd love to see 2 things, for MS to introduce Python support in Excel (which they've talked about) and also for them to get behind the Python for .NET project (not to be confused with IronPython) as it's pretty awesome to be able to access the CLR and all those .NET libraries from regular Python.

    A Python for .NET Core if you wil

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