Thank you all for your lovely memories of Tim. I’m spending a little time spelunking through my ancient and often incomplete email archives from our Pythonlabs days and even before that, when the “Timbot” was a mythical persona I was only semi-sure existed IRL, until we met in person[1]. I’ll try to share some of the stories of Tim as I find them and as I best remember.
import this
Let me start with the story of import this. I found a message from Guido dated 13-Sep-2001 from the Fortec organizer of “Python10”. Fortec was the CNRI subsidiary that ran the IETF meetings and became the organizer of the early pre-Pycon conferences and workshops. The email announced the “FIRST ANNUAL PYTHON CONFERENCE SLOGAN CONTEST”, with Pythonlabs[2] serving as the jury to pick the winning slogan. The deadline for entries was 13-Nov of that year with the winner to be posted on the Python10 website by 19-Nov.
We had 500 entries, most of them terrible. Tim said at one point “Jeez Louise, I can’t look at these more than 5 minutes w/o my brain turning to mush.” I think at some point most of the team noped out[3] so Tim, ever efficient and practical, chopped the list down to 135, saying:
I tossed about 350 of them, and attached is what’s left. There is no chance that anyone could have liked one of the 350 I tossed. Alas, there seems slim chance that anyone could really like one of the 135 remaining either. We can take turns tossing half the remaining ones, until only The Winner remains.
Tim and I then played ping-pong bisection on that list with me sending him the top half of my crop, him splitting and sending me his top half and so on. It was probably more like, eliminating the worst half back and forth until we got to a couple we could have mostly lived with. Some that made one of the cuts I found in my email (sic):
23 Do not meddle in the afairs of tabnanny!
54 Python: if you don’t get it someone else will.
247 Python… A new skin awaits you
418 Python will swallow your head !
474 Who needs feet.
135 became 68 became 34 and so on until we ended up with just 2:
15 Bite Off All You Like - Chewing Is Optional
107 import this
with Tim’s honorable mention, the one semi-finalist that he admits began really growing on him:
232 let's we study about python program
To this day, that one still strikes me as so joyfully curious, naive, and enthusiastic, I can see why it appealed to him so much.
As it turned out, on the deadline day, Tim (who probably had figured out he’d get the final bisection long before it was obvious to me) “got stuck picking the winner .” That said, it looks like we both picked the same one at the same time, with me sending 107 import this[4] to Tim and him responding:
I would have picked the same one – but I didn’t, and you did, so if anybody asks, it’s YOUR FAULT! Heh heh heh heh.
…
Or you could sneak it into the list of Pythonic Theses. “Although never is often better than *right* now.” is so rarely quoted that “232 let’s we study about python program” would do just as well.too-depressed-to-go-on-ly y’rs - tim
What’s more quintessentially Tim than that?
Of course, one of the appeals was that it could actually be implemented! and so it came to be for Python 2.2 released just before the conference. There was some discussion about what import this should do, followed quickly by a decision to have it print Tim’s even then famous Zen of Python[5] – but of course it had to be subversive! From my email record, I think Guido implemented it as a rot13’d string with an obfuscated decoding algorithm[6] and a couple of modifications to the decoding algorithm over the years. There was some humorous exchanges with the Fortec organizers trying to explain the joke of import this and why “import This” (with a capitalized “T”) wasn’t going to work.
As the Release Manager for Python 2.2, I conspired in late November of that year to sneak it into Python 2.2’s CVS repo in the “upcoming release candidate”, with co-conspirators Jack Jansen for MacPython and of course Tim for Windows playing along for those installers.
By Feb-2002, the conference was over and I observed that nobody mentioned the easter egg to me at the conference, and Tim responded:
I asked a few (about 5) about it, and they were all aware of it already. Somebody was adamant that we should never take it out, because it so valuable to have the Pythonic Theses available at their fingertips.
and-that-is-the-story-of-this-ly y’rs,
RIP Tim.
and even then joked that the “real” Tim was paying this guy to impersonate him ↩︎
Guido, Tim, myself, Jeremy Hilton, and Fred Drake ↩︎
IIRC, Guido was very soon to become a father ↩︎
alas, I have no record of who submitted that slogan ↩︎
née Pythonic Theses ↩︎
though the git blame names Fred Drake as the original committer with the message “Python 10 was a success, commemorate it!”, but with an email from Fred blaming me for writing the module and Guido following up that he actually wrote the committed version. ↩︎