Tim Peters is an American[citation needed] software developer who is known for creating the Timsort hybrid sorting algorithm and for his major contributions to the Python programming language and its original CPython implementation. A pre-1.0 CPython user, he was among the group of early adopters who contributed to the detailed design of the language in its early stages.[1][2]
Tim Peters | |
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Occupation | Software developer |
Awards | PSF Distinguished Service Award |
He later created the Timsort algorithm (based on earlier work on the use of "galloping" search)[3] which was used in Python from versions 2.3 to 3.12, as well as in other widely used computing platforms,[4][5][6] including the V8 JavaScript engine powering the Google Chrome and Chromium web browsers, as well as Node.js.[7][8] He has also contributed the doctest and timeit modules to the Python standard library.[9]
Peters also wrote the Zen of Python, intended as a statement of Python's design philosophy, which was incorporated into the official Python literature as Python Enhancement Proposal 20 and in the Python interpreter as an easter egg.[10] He contributed the chapter on algorithms to the Python Cookbook.[11] From 2001 to 2014 he was active as a member of the Python Software Foundation's board of directors. Peters was an influential contributor to Python mailing lists.[12] He is also a highly ranked contributor to Stack Overflow, mostly for answers relating to Python.[13][9]
Peters' past employers include Kendall Square Research.[14][15] Tim Peters was granted the Python Software Foundation's Distinguished Service Award for 2017.[9][12]
Tim Peters: I was in compiler development when Guido was developing Python and a mutual acquaintance, Steve Majewski, sent me some email telling me about Python. So I started a email correspondence with Guido about the language and about the design, and I got some of the pre-release code, played with it and talked to him about design decisions and liked it very much ... Holger Krekel: [inaudible] Tim Peters: Pardon? Holger Krekel: Was this like in the early '90s? Tim Peters: Early '90s, yeah. Back around Python 0.9.1.
Some of the early adopters of the language, such as Tim Peters and Steve Majewski, focused on very subtle design details and helped immensely by clarifying the way various features should work; e.g., they convinced me to support mixed arithmetic.
Code stolen in large part from Python's, listobject.c, which itself had no license header. However, thanks to Tim Peters for the parts of the code I ripped-off.
Tim Peters: Yeah, since '91, so I was working at Kendall Square Research then [...]