Having worked with Guido on App Engine, I believe I can answer this.

Just because someone wrote a language doesn't mean they have no other talents as engineers. I will say that apart from being a good language writer, he is also a good Engineer. For us having so much invested in Python, Guido has been an important part of App Engine. But even if that wasn't true (as it may be for Dropbox), having well-known programmers is an important way of marketing to other engineers, be they customers or potential hires.

TL;DR - App Engine got great use out of Guido while he worked with us, and I'm sure Dropbox will too.

Guido wrote the NDB framework for AppEngine, which, as an AppEngine user, I'd say has one of the most clever ways to do async requests that I've seen in any major language. I'm used to the C++ frameworks for async that are used in the main search stack, and switching to AppEngine and having things pretty much "just work" has been great.

He also did Mondrian, which kicked off the trend toward web-based code-review and was a huge step forward from just critiquing patches over e-mail.

Usually famous programmers get famous because they've done a lot of programming; that experience translates into some pretty cool programming chops.

I'm not sure how I can see Guido having the effect at Dropbox that he had at Google. Dropbox's engineering difficulties, while large, are not near that of Google's. Is this more of a Matz being hired by Heroku scenario, in name only sort of thing.

stop acting like you know abut Dropbox's engineering difficulties.

They are language designers, not systems engineers. Any place with programmers has problems they can solve, and hopefully open source.

I've worked on the Dropbox client back in 2009 and I can tell you that Dropbox has spent considerable resources optimizing Python, so there is actual python-related work to be done.

As Rian Hunter mentions they've for example implemented a custom memory allocator: http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/3/14/6-lessons-from-dro... and that's just one part of it.

With a few hundred million installed machines or so, having Guido on board to make python work better for Dropbox-scale apps is a huge win for them (and python)!

This isn't just Dropbox deciding to hire Guido, it's Guido deciding to work for Dropbox and, perhaps most interestingly, deciding NOT to work for Google anymore. Surely a company the size (and type) of Google could come up with some pretty amazing projects for an engineer like Guido to work on if he got bored but, for some reason, Guido left. The reason could be something as boring as a big raise or a shorter commute, or something more interesting (a new internal policy to start replacing Python with Go, a clash with one of the big shots that leaves Guido forever on the shelf in the celebrity trophy case, or whatever.)

I'll have to admit I'm curious.

It could just be that Google was too big. Maybe Guido just wanted to be the Big Man on Campus. Google is filled with brilliant/famous engineers. Dropbox is much smaller so going to a smaller company, he can have a much larger impact. Just a theory though, there are tons of possibilities.

Google has a reputation for being cliquey. I've also noticed a tendency toward trying very hard to make your coworkers look stupid rather than trying to look smart by actually accomplishing things.

I'm sure it depends on where you're working, but there seems to be a lot of that Marissa Mayer "excellence means putting other people down" attitude. And because of that, there is a lot of mediocre talent at Google despite its reputation.

I have no idea whether any of this has to do with Guido's decision, a lot of engineers like to change jobs for all sorts of reasons, sometimes for the sake of it, but I'd probably prefer Dropbox to Google as well.

I would assume that someone like Guido would be really valuable when architecting complex project written in Python. Maybe he won't be directly writing a bunch of small features, but at the scale Dropbox works at some REALLY good code reviews and language-related design decisions could produce big dividends.

Code reviews and design decisions can get old though. Sometimes you just want to write a bunch of code.

If Guido van Rossum wanted to work on python full time, I am sure that there would be companies like Red Hat that would be very happy to pay him to do exactly that.

I think it's a good thing for Python that Guido doesn't work on it full-time, and instead keeps his hands dirty with other projects. It allows him better exposure to the experience and perspective of regular Python users, and the sorts of problems that they use Python to deal with on a day-to-day basis.

The App Engine team at Google isn't really "regular Python users".

No, but the thousands of people who use it and come up with problems are.

That has nothing to do with it. GP said that it's good for Python that Guido doesn't work on it full-time, and instead keeps his hands dirty with other projects. But this experience of Guido's doesn't really expose him to 'thousands of people' any more than looking at the Python issue tracker would.

Maybe GvR is not interested in working only on Python language design, and wants to see other kind of projects. I mean, I am sure he has reached the point that he can pretty much decided what to do, so if he hasn't go to be a "full time language designer" is probably because he don't want to, not he doesn't have the opportunity.

Guy Steele's work at Oracle (previously Sun) was in the area of language design, but companies at that scale can afford a dedicated R+D presence.

For me, its simply really, a language is itself a program with too many users, and Guido has demonstrated good design, scale, and engineering skills in building such a program.

my thoughts exactly. I feel like it's a status symbol for a comapany. They are most likely busy giving talks and lectures to do any actual work.

Maybe their value is in the odd meeting where they can voice some input. I've never had the pleasure of being in the room with giants such as these so I wouldn't know sadly.

There is a joke in Silicon Valley that one of the levels of success is "Your new company issues a press release that you've been hired."

It goes something like:

You know you are successful in Silicon Valley when:

followed by silly things like "You are Time's Man of the Year" or "On Wired's most Influential list" that sort of thing.

I guess that's why it's called "Silicon Valley" rather than "Sense of Humor Valley."

I sincerely hope that he will write some code. Keeping him busy just lecturing and giving talks will be like hiring Michael Jordan only to play baseball...

Probably very similar to why Universities want Nobel Laureates on the faculty. Sure, they want their brainpower, but it's also huge for prestige and a symbol to the World of what a great University they are.

This will probably help greatly with recruiting. What Python engineer wouldn't want to work with him?

> This will probably help greatly with recruiting. What Python engineer wouldn't want to work with him?

Bingo. And it will make water cooler talk about the GIL a lot more interesting.