[Python-Dev] PEP czar for PEP 3144? (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Tue Feb 21 05:52:20 CET 2012

On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 4:53 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:

Steven D'Aprano writes:

 > Also, "Czar" is commonly used in US politics as an informal term for the top  > official responsible for an area. I think here the most important connotation is that in US parlance a "czar" does not report to a committee, and with the exception of a case where Sybil is appointed czar, cannot bikeshed.  Decisions get made (what a concept!)

I'm curious how old that usage is. I first encountered it around '88 when I interned for a summer at DEC SRC (long since subsumed into HP Labs); the person in charge of deciding a particular aspect of their software or organization was called a czar, e.g. the documentation czar.

-- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)

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