core.py Episode 13: A Legit Episode
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Jun 29, 2024 In this discussion, Brandt Bucher, a core developer involved in Python's PEP work, shares his journey through open source. He delves into the intricacies of pattern matching, the quirks of decorators, and his experiences with the Faster Python team. Brandt reveals unconventional insights about JIT compilation and the infamous n-body benchmark. Expect humorous anecdotes on debugging, the challenges posed by the Global Interpreter Lock, and the difficulties of naming things in programming. The conversation emphasizes community collaboration and the future of Python's performance enhancements.
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First CPython Fix That Hooked Him
- Brandt found a long-standing bug in bitarray.extend that left exceptions unhandled.
- He fixed it and felt excited to have his patch land in CPython.
Make Reviewing A Daily Habit
- Do triage daily like Brandt: open GitHub each morning and pick two PRs or issues to review.
- Reviewing regularly teaches the codebase and surfaces where you can help.
Build With ASTs Before Parser
- Brandt prototyped pattern matching by creating AST nodes and feeding them to compile before doing parser changes.
- That let compiler work proceed in parallel with parser edits authored by others.