Mission moment: Mark Hammond, PSF Distinguished Service Award Recipient

Today, the Python Software Foundation, commonly known as PSF in the Python community, gave the PSF Distinguished Service Award to Mark Hammond. Brian Curtin, a past PSF Director and long-time communicator of “community” importance, wrote a thoughtful PSF blog post about Mark’s many contributions to our Python community.

The wonderful Python community also has itself to thank for allowing this book to come to fruition. The Python newsgroup seems to be one of the final bastions of Usenet where spams are ignored, newbies are treated kindly, and trolls are either ignored or quickly turned into a serious and on-topic discussion. Many smart and friendly people hang out on the newsgroup, and it’s one of the more esoteric reasons many people find using the language enjoyable.

Source: Mark Hammond and Andy Robinson, Python Programming on Win32, O’Reilly & Associates, Inc., 2000.

Mark and Andy shared this quote in the Acknowledgements section of their co-authored book on Python and Windows. Fifteen years later, their words about the Python community still ring true. Personally, I value the many thoughtful and friendly community members that contribute to the Python language and ecosystem. I agree that the “smart and friendly people” of the Python community are one of the key reasons I “find using the language enjoyable”.

Mark and his contributions serve the Python language and community. Mark, congratulations on your award, and thank you!

The mission of the Python Software Foundation is to promote, protect, and advance the Python programming language, and to support and facilitate the growth of a diverse and international community of Python programmers.

Source: Python.org website.