Tim Peters (software engineer)

Tim Peters is a software developer who is known for creating the Timsort hybrid sorting algorithm and for his major contributions to the Python programming language and its original CPython implementation. A pre-1.0 CPython user, he was among the group of early adopters who contributed to the detailed design of the language in its early stages.^[1]

Tim Peters
Occupation	Software developer
Awards	PSF Distinguished Service Award

He later created the Timsort algorithm (based on earlier work on the use of "galloping" search)^[2] which is used in Python since version 2.3 (since version 3.11 using the Powersort merge policy instead of Timsort's original merge policy^[3][4]), as well as in other widely used computing platforms,^[5][6][7] including the V8 JavaScript engine powering the Google Chrome and Chromium web browsers, as well as Node.js.^[8][9] He has also contributed the doctest and timeit modules to the Python standard library.^[10]

Peters also wrote the Zen of Python, intended as a statement of Python's design philosophy, which was incorporated into the official Python literature as Python Enhancement Proposal 20 and in the Python interpreter as an easter egg.^[11] He contributed the chapter on algorithms to the Python Cookbook.^[12] From 2001 to 2014 he was active as a member of the Python Software Foundation's board of directors. Peters was an influential contributor to Python mailing lists.^[13] He is also a highly ranked contributor to Stack Overflow, mostly for answers relating to Python.^[14][10]

Peters' past employers include Kendall Square Research.^[15][16] Tim Peters was granted the Python Software Foundation's Distinguished Service Award for 2017.^[10][13]

See also

• History of Python