Top science institute suspends programmer for copying language

China’s top science body suspended a researcher Sunday after the coding language he claimed as 100 percent original was found in fact to be based on a Dutch programmer’s language.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) institute of computing technology announced via its website that Liu Lei’s programming education product for youngsters was not completely developed by his team as he told the media but was actually based on the Python computer language.

Created by Guido van Rossum from the Netherlands and first released in 1991, Python is available for multiple operating systems and suitable for developing Artificial Intelligence.

Liu’s behavior included misconduct, fraud and false statements, the institute said, noting that they had suspended Liu pending an investigation and felt sorry about the negative impact caused by the incident.

In an interview on Wednesday Liu claimed credit for developing a brand new programming language.

Liu published an apology on Saturday in China Science Daily for exaggerating the originality of his Mulan language.

The value of a coding language depends on whether it can be actually used to write programs, said a PhD candidate of computer sciences from Stanford University. He asked not to be named.

It was hard to say how many changes were made to Python based on accessible information, the candidate said, but Mulan was probably of little practical value if the changes were not fundamental.

A download link to the Mulan program was unavailable at its parent company website on Sunday.

In an earlier interview, Liu said that programming software, teaching materials and equipment based on Mulan are being used in some 700 primary and middle schools in 18 provinces and municipalities in China.