Prof. Jacob (Jack) T. Schwarz just as I remember him at NYU's Robotics Lab ( source ) One of the most used, and productive, computer programming language nowadays is Python . Most regular users have heard of Guido van Rossum , Python's creator and project leader. But how did Python come about? It surely didn't spring into existence fully formed, like Athena from Zeus' head in Greek mythology! I'll let the "father" of Python answer that: Guido van Rossum has explained that Python's predecessor, ABC, was inspired by SETL, noting that ABC co-developer Lambert Meertens had 'spent a year with the SETL group at New York University before coming up with the final ABC design' Well, SETL ("Set-theoretic Language") is the brainchild of Prof. Jacob (Jack) T. Schwarz , who was chairman of the Computer Science department at NYU and the founder of its Robotics & Computer Vision Lab . Luckily for me, I happened to start colle