Head First Python, 2nd Edition

Appendix E. Getting Involved: The Python Community

Python is much more than a great programming language.

It’s a great community, too. The Python Community is welcoming, diverse, open, friendly, sharing, and giving. We’re just amazed that no one, to date, has thought to put that on a greeting card! Seriously, though, there’s more to programming in Python than the language. An entire ecosystem has grown up around Python, in the form of excellent books, blogs, websites, conferences, meetups, user groups, and personalities. In this appendix, we take a survey of the Python community and see what it has to offer. Don’t just sit around programming on your own: get involved!

BDFL: Benevolent Dictator for Life

Guido van Rossum is a Dutch programmer whose gift to the world is the Python programming language (which he started as a “hobby” in the late 1980s). The ongoing development and direction of the language is set by the Python core developers, of which Guido is but one (albeit a very important one). Guido’s title of Benevolent Dictator for Life is in recognition of the central role he continues to play in the day-to-day life of Python. If you see the letters BDFL in relation to Python, that’s a reference to Guido.

Guido is on the record as stating that the name “Python” is a nod (and a wink) toward the British television comedy troupe Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which helps explain the use ...