2017 - Paul Everitt - Python 1994

Description
"Come for the language, stay for the community." The Python community started in 1994 at a NIST workshop in Maryland. What was the world of Python like in its first years? Did we have any clue whatsoever? A joke-focused tour of early Python, heavy on question-and-answer.

Abstract
Building open source communities is hard, and while there are best practices and lessons learned to study, sometimes it all seems random. Python became renowned for its community. What was it like in the beginning, and how did it succeed?

This talk covers the 1994 Python workshop at NIST. I was fortunate to be there, along with twenty-ish others, and was involved in the next number of years of stumbling around purposefully. The stories are funny to pass along, some of the lessons are accidentally valuable, and with a generous question-and-answer period, the session becomes a community chit-chat.

Bio
Paul Everitt is the PyCharm Developer Advocate at JetBrains. Before that, Paul was a co-founder of Agendaless Consulting and a co-founder of Zope Corporation, taking the first open source application server through $14M of funding. Paul has bootstrapped both the PSF and the Plone Foundation. Prior to that, Paul was an officer in the US Navy, starting in Python and launching www.navy.mil in 1993.

Video: https://youtu.be/YKiED3yDY_I

Transcript

1. Python 1994 what the hell were we thinking?
2. It's Nov 1994
4. Scientologist
6. and....the Python Community Started
7. Format: Conversation
8. About Me • Developer Advocate for PyCharm • Bootstrapper, Python Software Foundation • Bootstrapper, Plone Foundation • Co-founder, Zope
9. Pre-1994
10. Scripting languages
11. How I Got There
12. Guido's Story
13. Python had a "mailing list"
20. Michael and Guido organized a workshop
23. What was it like?
24. The next year
29. CNRI and Grail
31. Questions & Answers
32. Was Python's culture set in 1994?
33. Why did Python succeed and its competitors fail?