Python's father Guido on the future of Python

At the beginning of June, Guido van Rossum, the father of Python, made a speech called "Python Language" at today's Pycon US convention. Recently, he has received the IT media InfoWorld interview, Big talk about the future of Python. Let's take a look at what Guido's future looks for in Python.

The application of Python in the field of mobile computing

Guido: Mobile is still a hard-to-chew platform for Python, but it's not as difficult as a browser platform, because Python can actually run on all branded smartphones. All you have to do is find someone who knows how to build a mobile version of Python.

The standard CPython source code can be compiled almost into binary files that run on Android and Apple phones. There are a lot of people working on this, constantly contributing to the patch pack. But the pace of progress was slower than I had hoped. But then again, I don't develop mobile apps myself, so I don't have much motivation to get involved. But I am happy to see this progress.

Python instead of JavaScript?

Guido: That's not our goal. Due to the structural problems of the browser platform, it is difficult to compete with JavaScript, which translates python into JavaScript at best. Usually, however, the translated program runs slower than the Python native program, and is slower than the equivalent program written in JavaScript. Now someone is trying to translate Python into JavaScript and run Python in the browser.

The view of webassembly

This might make it possible to run Python in a browser. If it replaces the asm.js, it basically means that JavaScript is no longer the only language used on the Web platform, but instead becomes something like assembly language. This is a bit like python, the Python code you write, and the underlying Python interpreter is actually written in C. At compile time, the Python code is translated into machine code, which also involves some kind of assembly language.

If we can't eliminate JavaScript in our browser, we might be able to make JavaScript a uniform translation object for any language you want to run in a browser. In this case, perhaps Python and other languages, such as Ruby and PHP, can be translated efficiently into the underlying JavaScript.

Webassembly is actually an opportunity for Python developers. I believe there will be a trial period, and those who prefer to develop tools will have the opportunity to explore what is the best way to run Python on top of webassembly. After they have successfully tested and started promoting, we can say to the Python developer, "You can now write a browser client app in Python." But it's not the right time.

Performance improvements for Python

The performance of Guido:python 3 has been followed up, much faster than in 2012. In addition, there are Python implementations like PyPy. Some new versions of the Python interpreter are also trying to improve speed.

In fact, Python performance is not as bad as people say, and because Python is mostly implemented in C, a lot of things can be done as fast as the C language. I still think Python is fast enough for most things.

Although there is no new feature in Python 3 to improve speed, we have made many aspects of the language faster: for example, the reference count is faster than before. The main thing is to optimize the existing code, but as a user it's hard to notice the difference.

And if you need to boost the speed of a Python program, try using PyPy. It is ripe enough to be worth trying.

Why is python popular?

Guido: The main learning is convenient, easy to use, but also open community, developers active, willing to help others.

How does Python's development work now and in the future? What kind of plan is there?

Guido: At present, and over the past five years, the main other people are pushing the development of Python. I occasionally do some coaching to determine whether a new idea is acceptable, usually when you are designing to add new syntax. I seldom intervene in the development of standard libraries. Sometimes, I have to let everyone stop discussing and compromise each other.

My idea is to make the community self-perpetuating so that I can finally retire or at least take a long vacation. I hope that the future language will absorb new ideas in other languages or other fields.

I finally want to talk about SciPy and NumPy. These two teams are driving the use of Python instead of MATLAB. Our alternative is open source, and better yet, they can do it. They are bringing python to areas that I have never imagined before. They have developed a job like Jupyter notebooks, which allows interactive python to be used in a browser.

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