I am nominating Sam Gross (@colesbury, GitHub) as a core developer. Sam single-handedly created the nogil 3.9 proof of concept, kept it alive with a 3.12 rebase, worked with the core team and the Steering Council to create a workable plan for making the GIL optional in Python.
Towards that end, Sam joined the core team as a triager in late 2021. Since then, over 50 pull requests in his name got merged into CPython. Another 5 are open at the time of this writing.
Sam’s experience with the internals of CPython makes him an obvious candidate for a core developer, but more importantly, he is thoughtful, responsive, and patient. Multiple current team members who worked with him so far, myself included, have only good things to say about him.
I’ve worked with him on many things these days, and he is not only just good at technical things but also good at leading, managing the project, and communicating with people.
Talk about more detail:
He is constantly synchronizing project details with core devs and has split down the project so that multiple people can work simultaneously. Also, if needed, Sam frameworklized technical things so that tasks are easier and maintainable.
One good example is the @critical_section directive, which he designed and implemented at Argument Clinic.
As a result, the project is now scaled out so that many people can easily work on it.
I think the free-threading project is going very well thanks to Sam’s dedication. I personally predict that it will probably be possible to deliver the project within the proper period.
So, what I want to say is that he is an excellent example of someone with the skills a senior engineer should have.
I reviewed some of Sam’s changes. I suggested him to do things very differently. I was surprised that he embraced and adopted my suggestions, rather than using the hammer “the nogil work is done, either you take it as it is, or it’s not going to happen”. Especially because I know that this work (“nogil”) a huge change. So accepting to reconsider an API is a proof of him being very humble! For example, I suggest many deep changes in the “pyatomic” C API, Antoine Pitrou also suggested further changes, and Sam accepted them even if he would have to update all pyatomic usages in his Python fork. In general, I find him kind, and pleasant to work with.
I want to stay here my full support for Sam’s promotion so a +LONG_MAX from my side. Sam has proven not only to be an excellent engineer with a really good understanding of CPython and computer science in general but I have been very pleasantly surprised multiple times how easy is to discuss with him both deep technical topics and any other non-technical aspect such as process, people, culture…etc
Not only that but Sam is also very enthusiastic and brings a lot of energy to the table, which is very valuable as he can clearly rally a lot of good change with him (as he is doing right now). I am mentioning this specially since others have clearly highlighted the technical skills he has (which I totally subscribe) but I want to also emphasise that he is a fantastic person that is easy to collaborate and discuss with. He is also very humble and it has showed multiple times that he really listens and considers counter-arguments and he has both change his approach or find compromises based on feedback.
I fully trust @colesbury and I really look foward to have him in the team
+1, but I would want to emphasise that this isn’t permission to start merging his own changes without at least as much review as he’s currently getting. I think we can trust him to do that, but due to the wide-ranging nature of the nogil project and the compatibility risks inherent in the associated changes, I don’t want to see them landing without the visibility and guidance that have been somewhat “enforced” to date.
Welcome on board, @colesbury! The vote passed with 98% of 47 votes, well above the two-thirds minimum, and with the largest turnout of voters I recall!
I’ve emailed the Steering Council requesting they grant commit privileges. Assuming no SC objections, you should hear from them soon.
