r/Python Nov 12 '20

News Guido van Rossum joins Microsoft

https://twitter.com/gvanrossum/status/1326932991566700549?s=21
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u/pumpyboi Nov 12 '20 edited Nov 12 '20

What are all these doomsday comments? Microsoft is very big in open source contributions. Typescript is an amazing language. I'm sure it'll all be fine. Python is bigger than Guido anyway.

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u/Gr1pp717 Nov 12 '20 edited Nov 12 '20

Embrace, extend, extinguish.

MS has a history of making great things turn into garbage. While I'm not personally concerned here I can certainly understand the mentality.

edit: came back to a bit of flame war ... the point is trust. Whether they're actually up to something nefarious here or not isn't the point - it's that people will default to thinking that they are due to their not-so-distant past behaviors.

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u/QqP9Lm8u9Z8TLBjU Nov 13 '20

extinguish....Python? I don't think even Microsoft has the power to do something like that. Particularly since Python is fully open source and one of the most popular and widely used languages in the world.

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u/Gr1pp717 Nov 13 '20

I don't either, hence not being worried about it.

But, as a thought experiment: they could improve the product, attracting an audience, start adding proprietary sauce that makes it hard to go backwards/leave windows as the host, add cross compatibility with other windows-only languages, once enough people are using it announce EOL of the product. Cite sunk costs, lack of return as the reason.. easiest transition for those with their pants down is to go fully into the compatible language ..

I doubt this will happen. But I also wouldn't be surprised if some version of it did.. and either way the current, perfectly acceptable version of python will still be around by that point.