A new documentary titled Python has been released on YouTube, chronicling the language’s evolution from its origins in 1991 in Amsterdam to its current role in powering AI at major tech companies. The film highlights key figures like Guido van Rossum, who created Python, and its significant contributions to technologies such as the Space Shuttle’s flight simulations and platforms like Dropbox and YouTube.
Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes that the documentary traces Python all the way back to its origins in Amsterdam back in 1991. The first time Guido van Rossum showed his new language to a co-worker, they’d typed one line of code just to prove they could crash Python’s first interpreter. The language slowly spread after van Rossum released it on Usenet, split across 21 separate posts, and Robin Friedrich, a NASA aerospace engineer, remembers using Python to build flight simulations for the Space Shuttle. Friedrich also attended Guido’s first in-person U.S. workshop in 1994, and he still has the t-shirt from that event.
Dropbox’s CEO/founder Drew Houston discusses the experience of being one of the first companies to use Python to build a company reaching millions of users. Another success story was YouTube, which was built by a small team using Python before being acquired by Google. Anaconda co-founder Travis Oliphant notes how Python’s popularity increased due to its adoption by the data science and machine learning communities. However, the documentary also examines the controversial move to Python 3, which broke compatibility with earlier versions. Surprisingly, one of the individuals involved in the massive code migration was Guido van Rossum himself, now working at Dropbox. The documentary also covers van Rossum’s resignation as ‘Benevolent Dictator for Life’ after approving the walrus operator, which he described as a ‘rage-quit’ over the issue.
The documentary’s focus is on Python’s community, with various interviewees reciting passages from the ‘Zen of Python,’ a hidden Easter Egg within the language. The film’s director explains in a new interview that it took a full year of interviews to create the documentary, featuring screenshots from the film, including a young Guido van Rossum and the original 1991 email that announced Python to the world.
Director Bechtle is part of a group that has filmed documentaries on various tech topics, including Kubernetes, Prometheus, Angular, Node.js, and Ruby on Rails. Originally part of the job platform Honeypot, the documentary-makers relaunched in April as Cult.Repo, claiming to be ‘100% independent and more committed than ever to telling the human stories behind technology.’ Honeypot’s founder Emma Tracey bought back its 272,000-subscriber YouTube channel from Honeypant’s new owners, New Work SE, and Cult.Repo now bills itself as ‘The home of Open Source documentaries.’
In addition, Guido van Rossum has identified the Python community members in the film’s Monty Python-esque poster art. Core developer Hugo van Kemenade notes there’s also a video from EuroPython with a 55-minute Q&A about the documentary.