I'm Dutch. I grew up in the Netherlands. In fact, I created Python while I was working in the Netherlands.
I got a nice job as a programmer at a place called CWI, which is sort of a research lab funded by the government doing advanced math and computer science research. My first job was on a team that worked on a programming language named ABC and it was a super interesting project and everything I know about language design or all my opinions about language design originate in that project. ABC was eventually unsuccessful and I moved on to programming on other projects at the same place.
Key one was Amoeba, which was a distributed system that was being built collaboratively by CWI and one of the universities in Amsterdam. At some point I realized every application we have to write in for Amoeba is basically a shell either a shell script or a C program and I found that there were downsides to either of those. I thought, well, I wish there was a third language that was sort of in the middle of those that felt more like a genuine programming language, like on the seaside, but that was perhaps interpreted easier to use, sort of more concise of expression like shell scripts, but without the sort of terrible properties in terms of readability of shell scripts.
I thought... Hmm, I can build my own. Building an interpreter is going to take me two or three months, and I'll win that time back by increased productivity, not just for myself, but for the whole team.
Well, those three months sort of bloomed to more and more time. I don't think we, on the Amoeba project, we ever gained that productivity back. Amoeba sort of mostly produced scientific papers.
Python slowly became successful. After about a year, we released it as open source. Actually, we didn't call it open source because those terms had not been invented.
And almost immediately, a small community of Python lovers started growing where people sort of spread the word about Python. So I've started contributing back and critiquing each other's contributions and sort of let me have the last word about whether I wanted a particular contribution in the language. Last July I actually resigned my position of BDFL which is ironic because of the FL standing for for life.
One imminent change is that Python's own governance structure is changing. The community is currently in the middle of sort of figuring out what's the best way is to sort of have governance going forward which is either going to be another BDFL although that is the less likely solution. More likely I see a small committee of people who are committed to Python's success long term.
Those people will also be guiding Python's sort of future vision.