Introduction
It’s Steering Council election time again, and I am self-nominating for the honor and joy of serving on the 2022 term of the Python Steering Council. This is my fourth nomination, having served on the previous three Councils. I am as engaged and enthusiastic about Python’s future and my role on the Steering Council as ever. Perhaps more so with exciting work being done on Faster CPython and the GIL removal work by Sam Gross.
Retrospective
It’s been a great year for Python, with Python 3.10’s release, including compelling features such as Structural Pattern Matching. Getting this feature over the finish line illustrates what I love about serving on the Council. This highly complex and unique feature, spans three PEPs, and took countless hours of thought, discussion, research, collaboration, and engagement with the PEP authors and community. Kudos to everyone who worked so hard to bring such a long-requested feature to fruition, from the PEP authors, to the Python community, to my fellow Council members.
It’s also been amazing to see the impact of our new Python Developer-in-Residence program, which also launched in 2021. Łukasz Langa was the perfect choice for the first DiL, and I look forward to his continued regular updates to both the Council and the community. I hope we can build on Łukasz’s success to fund more DiL positions through the PSF.
The look ahead for 2022
Of course, the Steering Council is actively discussing a slew of new PEPs for Python 3.11, with some nearly as deep and complex in their reach as Pattern Matching. Exception Groups, Deferred Annotations, and Subinterpreters come to mind, and there are others on our plate as well. There’s plenty of time before Python 3.11 hits feature freeze, and I have no doubt that the Council will have many more interesting and compelling PEPs to consider.
Another long-awaited development is the migration of our bug tracker from Roundup (bugs.python.org) to GitHub Issues. Great progress is being made by Ezio, and I expect we will see this migration completed in 2022.
Giving back
Python has given me a life, career, and friends that I could have never imagined when I first fell in love with it back in 1994. I will forever be honored as the first non-Dutch contributor and grateful to be joyfully and humorously immortalized as the Friendly Language Uncle for Life - the FLUFL. It’s in this spirit that I hope you will consider re-electing me once again to the Steering Council. No matter how the election plays out, I want to once again express how fortunate I’ve been to serve in 2021 with my amazing, compassionate, thoughtful, and inspiring fellow Council members Brett Cannon, Carol Willing, Pablo Galindo Salgado, and Thomas Wouters. Yet it will be bittersweet, as we say goodbye with all of our heartfelt gratitude to Ewa Jodlowska, who is stepping down as the PSF Executive Director. Ewa’s presence in our weekly Steering Council meetings is a fixture, immeasurable in value. I know we all wish her luck in her next endeavor, which she will no doubt excel at just as impactfully as she has for the Python community.
