Tim Peters has died

  $ python -c "import this"
  The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters

  Beautiful is better than ugly.
  Explicit is better than implicit.
  Simple is better than complex.
  Complex is better than complicated.
  Flat is better than nested.
  Sparse is better than dense.
  Readability counts.
  Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
  Although practicality beats purity.
  Errors should never pass silently.
  Unless explicitly silenced.
  In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
  There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
  Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
  Now is better than never.
  Although never is often better than *right* now.
  If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
  If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
  Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!

(EDIT: Robert Woodhead apparently shares in the credit, too: https://www.ceas.cc/papers-2004/136.pdf https://ceas.cc/papers-2004.html . Apparently Rob Hooft was another implementor? I can't find a good source for that though.)

Another thing that made me feel close to him was his work on the Python Cookbook 2nd Edition, in which he (and other big names in the community) delightfully talks the reader through intricacies and insights of programming, "We read Knuth so you don't have to".

Watching Tim do his thing was a pleasure. He'd go from long, deep technical dives (that he'd make as approachable as possible) into comic relief and human connection in the fractional wink of an eye.

The brief interactions we had will always be cherished as high points in my Pythonista trajectory.

One favorite of mine was this response: https://www.python.org/doc/humor/#id15. I also like https://www.python.org/doc/humor/#id19 very much.

I was an active participant in the comp.lang.python Usenet channel in the late 1990s.

I learned much from reading Tim Peters' posts. To many, including me, he was affectionately referred to as "Uncle Timmy."

One of the things I learned was that I still had much to learn about the art of programming.

Much of the little I know about numerical methods comes from reading his posts. It was fun to read his stories about Kendall Square Research and the (for me) old days of computing.

I remember posting questions about things I didn't understand, which he figured out and explained. [1]

I remember bringing up concepts I thought were specialized and esoteric, only to find that it was actually just my lack of experience. He gently corrected misapprehensions like mine. [2]

He wrote a lot on comp.lang.python. If I recall correctly, at the 7th International Python Conference in Houston, November 1998, there was Festschrift in his honor. He would use <wink> in his messages, and often end with something like "let's-hear-it-for-lambda-in-curly-assignment-stmts-ly y'rs - tim" (that's from the posting where he outlines the Zen of Python). I wondered if they were collected by looking for messages containing an '-ly' only to have Andrew Kuchling remind me about the "From" header. <wink>

Here is Guido van Rossum starting the thread on "In Memoriam: Tim Peters", at https://discuss.python.org/t/in-memoriam-tim-peters-1952-202... .

Here's an interview of him at PyCon 2006, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wAOy88WxmY

[1] In one case, I was parsing a file format where a field was usually three spaces, but was sometimes an integer. I couldn't figure out why one parser was so much faster than the other. The answer was that one tested for three spaces first, and if that failed tested for the int, while the other did the int test first.

Yes, this is something a senior developer knows. I bring it up now to highlight how hotshot-me didn't have that experience, learned that experience, and learned it from someone who was kind about sharing his knowledge.

[2] I was doing bioinformatics back then, and learned about dynamic programming as way to do sequence alignment. I didn't think others knew about the technique, and thought I was bringing esoteric new information to the discussion. Uncle Timmy had used dynamic programming techniques for speech-to-text software at Dragon Systems, and politely pointed out it was more widely known. He also implemented Python's 'difflib'.

He was always so willing to foster discussion that nearly every interaction resulted in an improved understanding of some topic and a shared eagerness to try or learn more out something tangential that came up via digression. I never knew how many types of voting systems there were nor how extensively they are researched! He also reached out about a comment [0] I made a few years ago which made me feel less discouraged and more welcome.

Tim's writing style was greatly appreciated by myself and many others. What he had to say was often lengthy, to address reader assumptions or some nuance, but was written with such a jovial tone that it was rarely dull or inaccessible.

RIP Tim

[0]: https://discuss.python.org/t/5778/24

I like reading his answers. He always seemed to have something interesting to say, and his answers are kind, light-hearted, approachable and insightful.

[0] https://stackoverflow.com/a/69859068

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/a/19391867

For me, Tim Peters was that guy. I first met Tim in person at the first PyCon at GWU where I rode an elevator with him and Barry Warsaw. Let me tell you, it was a wild ride. He was a genuinely really nice, smart, kind guy.

RIP my friend.

You never know when an email is going to be the Last Email. Don't put off reconnecting with old friends.

[0] https://lwn.net/Articles/1002340

"[Tim] took up Python on a lark in its very early days, becoming something like Python’s second real user after Guido.

Guido came to rely on Tim heavily. Tim will demur about this, but as far as I can tell, Tim and Guido were largely partners in the design evolution of very early Python, and before most important features made it in to Python, you could be sure that they had been examined from every angle, shaken, stirred, and thunk about very hard by both of them.

Tim often played the role of gatekeeper and polisher. You have Tim to thank at least partially if you were a refugee from Java or Microsoft languages, which made excuses for their sprawling verbosity, complexity, and poor readability. Python, at the time, made none of those and had none of that (it now does). Tim was crucial in ensuring it stayed that way during his most active years.

[...]

Tim was a Director of the Python Software Foundation from 2001 to 2014, bringing Python across an uncanny valley from a time where it was “interesting but ignorable” to “the planet’s default language” along with a cast of other incredible people. If you use Python, it’s not in small part due to Tim."

It feels surreal to learn about his death just the next day. RIP

"Question everything. Love everyone" (from his page)

RIP "Uncle Timmy".

1: https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2000-March/048...

(I've taught the Zen of Python, doctests, timsort, and more during my career.)

Never really ended up using Python outside one-off scripts and personal stuff but learning the magick of making silicon do work for you and principles for that really stuck with me as I went to high school and beyond.

RIP :'(

He'll be sorely missed by everyone who has read the Zen of Python (but not limited to it ofc).

Your corporate sinecure "custom Python distributions" are secure now!

Thinking that the Python software foundation decided to ban this person for frivolous reasons is both laughable and sad.

https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5985667/python-bans-prominen...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timsort

It's sad to hear, but reflecting on the impact Tim made brings some comfort. Most of us will never know how many people our work helped. Tim could at least see some of that, though even Python's reach can only tell part of the story.

Reading the tributes (https://discuss.python.org/t/in-memoriam-tim-peters-1952-202...), what strikes me is how often people mention his patience and humour alongside his technical brilliance. There's something to aspire to there: doing good work, and taking the time to help others do theirs.

The older I get, the more I appreciate what it takes to leave both kinds of legacy.

Quiet lines of code Still guide the hands of strangers His kindness lives on

Rest well, Tim.

I focus on how I learned to be a better software developer from him, in both writing better code and supporting others.

https://discuss.python.org/t/three-month-suspension-for-a-co...