It didn't. I've seen people in the Python community tear someone's open source project to shreds because "it isn't Pythonic". It really soured me on the Python community when I saw people acting that way.
It didn't. I've seen people in the Python community tear someone's open source project to shreds because "it isn't Pythonic". It really soured me on the Python community when I saw people acting that way.
It actually did, all the way until it got so mainstream in the web world that avoiding drama became basically impossible.
Until the "cool kids" started meddling, it was a lovely village. It had a strong focus on beginners and teachers.
this summarizes pretty well my first thoughts when reading the headline: "How python grew from a language to a community", because the Python community in 2000, the Python community in 2010, these are a different place to "whole world uses Python" in 2025.
Back then it felt like a bit of a club, one that forms around a common hobby. Nowadays it feels more like the "community" of a high-school graduation class. Sure there is community there, but its mostly one of folks randomly thrown together into classrooms.
Folks like Raymond Hettinger would today be totally drowned out in the listicle-style attention seeking times.
> in the web world
I would put that more broadly though, it was web, data-science, there was a point when it became the universal scripting language, and part of me kind of hoped that the crowd would move to nodejs for all of it, so that Python can become more peaceful again. But I guess there is no going back, we went from dinghi to cruise ship, and when the crowd leaves, it will just be a deserted cruise ship.
The folks at the German python forum were very friendly to beginners and even answered the ‘dumb’ questions back then. Don’t know how it is today.
Yeah, like most (maybe all) communities, Pythonistos can be pretty toxic if you're not in the in-group.