Vote to promote Ammar Askar

Committers
1

Pablo and I would like to propose promoting Ammar Askar as a core developer.

Note from Zach Ware

I have been mentoring Ammar on-and-off since February 2019 when they reached out to me on IRC and I’ve personally been convinced of their readiness for promotion since November of 2019. Since the acceptance and merger of PEP 657 which they co-authored with Pablo and Batuhan, Ammar has now allowed me to put their name forward for promotion :slight_smile:

Ammar has been contributing since 2016; I granted the Developer role on bpo for issue triage in September 2016. A fairly complete accounting of Ammar’s contributions, including links to the evidence, can be found in a doc they put together.

From my own experience with them, Ammar has always been easy to work with, encouraging and helpful in reviewing others’ PRs, receptive to feedback on their own PRs, and has shepherded several PRs from others through to merge by reviewing them and then bringing them to my (or others’) attention when ready to merge.

Note from Pablo Galindo Salgado

I have worked with Ammar extensively for the design, discussion and implementation of PEP 657. Working with Ammar during this project has been a fantastic experience and has served to highlight that they are a very technical individual that can quickly and effectively understand the design and workings of the interpreter and is also able to pick up complex and loosely defined problems and solve them with independence but always in constant communication with the rest of the people involved. Not only that but they have also shown that they are very attentive and can spot very subtle design and implementation problems when reviewing code. As an example of this, they were able to very quickly understand and fix several bugs in the implementation of PEP 657 related to offset and how the C and Python implementations of the traceback differ. This was quite tricky because these bugs involved several complex pieces of the VM such as the frames, compiler, code objects, tracebacks, exception, and error formatters.

Additionally, I have witnessed several Pull Requests where Ammar has participated as a reviewer, demonstrating not only that they are a very effective reviewer but also they are able to suggest plenty of useful ideas and alternative ways to solve problems while being very respectful with contributors and core devs, always listening to feedback and acting on it.

In summary, I think Ammar will be an excellent and enthusiastic core developer that will make Python better in many axes (not only implementing code but also helping contributors, CI, documentation…) for years to come.

Statistics

Major accomplishments in CPython

  • 270 issues interacted with across the Python organization
  • 222 issues interacted with on bugs.python.org
  • co-author of PEP 657 and its implementation
  • author of over 50 merged patches and co-auther of several more, notably:
    • set up Github problem matcher configuration to make new warnings more visible on PRs
    • completed setup of and currently maintains oss-fuzz integration
  • reviewed over 75 pull requests from others, including those from core devs and new contributors
  • involvement in over 220 issues on bpo
  • involvement in over 250 issues across the python org on Github
  • improved docs.python.org search results when the search term matches a glossary entry
  • set up the FTP server at www.pythontest.net used by stdlib tests
  • added ‘Login with Github’ support to bpo
  • nominated two current core-devs for triage permissions before their eventual promotion

Post-promotion mentoring

As in previous promotions we will continue to mentor Ammar for one month after their promotion (if it’s accepted) to help them to deal with their new responsibilities, and I plan to require them to ask me before merging anything until they are used to the process.

Voting process

As a reminder from PEP 13 regarding voting rules:

It is granted by receiving at least two-thirds positive votes in a core team vote that is open for one week and with no veto by the steering council.

This poll will automatically close at 2021-07-28T00:00:00.000Z, just over 1 week from now.

  • Promote Ammar Askar
  • Don’t promote Ammar Askar
0 voters

Thanks for voting!

10 Likes
2

I worked a lot with Ammar during the design and the implementation of PEP 657, and can confidently give my +1.

5 Likes
3

+1 from me. Ammar is great to work with and would be great addition to the team.

4 Likes
4

Core developers like Ammar who have a good understanding of our infrastructure and supporting projects and who actively improve the developer experience are extremely valuable, especially to a team like ours. It seems to me that our productivity gains alone from granting commit access would be reason enough to promote them.

Throw in other work like years of bug fixes and usability improvements to the core language (PEP 657), and it becomes a very easy +1 from me!

6 Likes
5

Well, I have a good impression about Ammar’s good communication style and deep insight about what he working on when I had a chance to work with Automatically Formatting the CPython Code during the last sprint.

5 Likes
6

Huge +1 from me. Ammar Askar has been an active member of the Python community for quite some time, and I’ve seen nothing but wonderfully positive and helpful remarks from them.

Before I used to almost solely examine PRs and github activity (for core dev candidates), but upon further reflection, I’ve realized that making new contributors feel welcome and valued is incredibly vital to the continuation of Python development. PRs are of course critical too, but cultivating a wholesome environment keeps Python development alive and healthy.

Each individual interaction that someone has with a core dev can determine whether they open a single bug tracker ticket or go on to become an active contributor (maybe even core dev). Speaking from personal experience, I know that my first interaction with @willingc is largely what made the difference between me making a single typo fix (in the FAQ) vs continuing my efforts.

6 Likes
7

The poll is now closed with unanimous approval from 26 voters, and I have now emailed the Steering Council to ask their approval.

Thank you to everyone who voted!

5 Likes
8

Congratulations @ammaraskar, and welcome aboard!

2 Likes
9

Congrats @ammaraskar. Welcome to the core team :slight_smile:

1 Like
10

Thank you everyone for the kind words and support, especially my mentors. Glad to be a part of the team and I hope to continue contributing for years to come :slight_smile:

5 Likes