In case you didn't know - and, honestly, there's no real reason for you to - Python is a programming language that can be used to make just about anything you want within the confines of your computer, but only if you're operating at a very high level of geekery. We can profess to have but a minor understanding of HTML (we can make our text go big!), but there are a bunch of enterprising smart people out there who are adept at Python; including, possibly, JK Rowling herself. At least that's according to one Python obsessive who routinely writes out their thoughts on all things programming on their blog and, apparently, began to notice some similarities between the construction of code in the language and the way that Rowling writes her prose in the Harry Potter books. We guess if we spent all day staring at Python we'd start seeing it everywhere we looked, too. Without getting into too much tech lingo (because we don't understand too much of it either), the point one Guido van van Rossum is making is that Rowling often seems to trace over the previous books in the series and highlights things that were often off-handed remarks or invents things based on previous writings like, she probably came up with the name Tom Riddle after realising it was an anagram of I Am Lord Voldemort - which, as it happens, is the same as how "successive versions of Python are constrained by pretty serious backwards compatibility requirements." Which is actually just a roundabout way of trying to explain how "continuity" works, something that has existed for as long as series of books (or films, or TV shows, or games...) have. So more likely Rowling just...knows how to write, than is aware of Python. Sorry, nerds!
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
