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

Robert Kern robert.kern at gmail.com
Tue Feb 21 11:38:53 CET 2012

On 2/21/12 4:52 AM, Guido van Rossum wrote:

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.

From the Wikipedia article Steven cited:

""" The earliest known use of the term for a U.S. government official was in the administration of Franklin Roosevelt (1933–1945), during which eleven unique positions (or twelve if one were to count "Economic Czar" and "Economic Czar of World War II" as separate) were so described. The term was revived, mostly by the press, to describe officials in the Nixon and Ford administrations and continues today. """

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S.executive_branch%27czars%27

-- Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth." -- Umberto Eco

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