I haven't used Python in many years, but it was the first programming language I really could say I loved. Everything was was either completely in tune with my intuition or well-documented.
I had a lot of fun with Python, and I learned a lot about programming by (ab)using it. I am very grateful to Guido van Rossum and the work he has done, and I wish him all the best for his future.
I totally agree with this. In 1999 I had only used C and shell (well lisp a little bit in college), and python was such a breath of fresh air...
Even though I am hardwired to C and 'thinking like a machine would/prefers', python was probably the first and only language I didn't feel like it was a programming language at all. Always when I write something in it, it's always 'huh, and that's it? I'm... done?'. Sure, it's equal part due to language and 'batteries', but neither would happen without GvR and awesome community that built around his project and him. Python, to me, is like lisp without parens and with libraries - the future we were promised. Only thing I, personally, can't do is write large(er/ish) codebases with it. I tend to get lost, but that's probably due to my C-like brain. In any case, thanks for everything!
The future we were promised when we bought into what lisp would/could be, with all the practicality we see now in python. Norvig wrote about it more here:
http://www.norvig.com/python-lisp.html It was from that article when I gave python a serious try and it stuck with me as a go to language for all the small things one does often, but also exploratory programming as well (with iPython/jupyter).
have you ever tried f#? if you think python is what lisp could be (a little confused by that...see racket...but...), then i am curious what you think about something like f#. it’s like python in a way, in that it has oop and uses indentation and not brackets, but it is so much more. and it’s more regular in its semantics. everything returns a value.
"The future we were promised" sounds like he's talking more about a combination of ergonomics and productivity that were promised by Lisp but it never got there because the community just didn't expand to the same size. Python is so widely used that the combination of adoption and design decisions is in the sweet spot we were "promised" by Lisp advocates.
F# could also play that role since it can access the rest of the .Net ecosystem but for Python is more approachable as an OOP-ish language.