Neopythonic

 In Silicon Valley is a very exclusive fast-food restaurant, which is always open. There is one table, where one guest at a time is served an absolutely fabulous hamburger. When you arrive, you wait in line until the table is available. Then the host...

In late 2005 I joined Google. The interviews took a surprising long time, which is a tale for another time. Today I want to tell a story that happened in one of my first weeks on campus.
In the main building was an impressive staircase going up to the second floor. Somewhere near the top was a spacious office. A very important engineer worked there. I checked the name on the door and realized I knew him: he had been a grad student from...

This is something I posted on python-ideas, but I think it's interesting to a wider audience.
There's been a lot of discussion recently about an operator to merge two dicts.
It prompted me to think about the reason (some) people like operators, and a discussion I had with my mentor Lambert Meertens over 30 years ago came to mind....

I regularly receive questions from students in the field of computer science looking for career advice.
Here's an answer I wrote to one of them. It's not comprehensive or anything, but I thought people might find it interesting.
The question about "9-5" vs. "enterpreneur" is a complex one -- not everybody can be a successful entrepreneur (who would do the work? :-) and not everybody has the temperament for it. For me personally it was never an option -- there are vast parts...