Managing a project as large as Python is a colossal undertaking. With over a million lines of code, the programming language relies primarily on volunteers to keep it running and introduce new features.

However, the very nature of Python, as a community project, brings its share of problems. With thousands of freelance programmers adding their own code to the project, bottlenecks easily accumulate, and problems can then go unnoticed.

"In case you're a chip in and dedicate your own chance to a certain something, a venture, inside the system of Python, you will need to deal with what intrigues you by and by. It's just normal, ”says Łukasz Langa, who was appointed in July by the Python Software Foundation (PSF) as the new developer-in-residence for Python.

You can't really ask another contributor, or force someone else to work on this thing that you find important, because we are all volunteers. Everything is therefore governed by consensus, ”notes the latter.

In his new role, sponsored by Google, the developer will act as the steward of the Python project, identifying problematic areas, examining the code and sifting through the piles of pull requests that have built up on the GitHub page of the project. "It's a huge backlog to review, so just having someone do this review work already multiplies the impact of everyone else," said ZDNet. “We have 1,400 open withdrawal requests.

I'm doing my best to bring that number down or to make other contributors have a better experience. It's not just about burning the numbers, but also about getting a sense of which parts of our workload need to be improved. "

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The former Poland-based Facebook developer likens the role of developer-in-residence to that of a janitor: It's not the most glamorous job, but someone has to do it. “As in any active society, someone has to take out the trash; you have to provide electricity to everyone, and so on.

There are a number of things that need to be done on a regular basis, ”he says. That's not to say that Łukasz Langa isn't excited about his role - far from it, in fact: “it's easy to be enthusiastic about it”.

Python receives a lot of attention from companies, which have their own interests in the development of the language. In November 2020, Microsoft hired Guido van Rossum - the creator of Python - to lead efforts to improve the performance of the programming language.

Having enormous supporters with huge money saved behind projects is something worth being thankful for - Python is free programming, all things considered, and depends intensely on patrons to keep it running. Indeed, even dialects like C, C ++, and JavaScript have networks of organizations that help normalize and shape each variant of the language.

Improve the attractiveness of Python

It also means that more effort is needed to ensure that the project retains its autonomy and is not led by corporate influence. This is also what the developer in residence is for.

The latter needs to ensure that the Python Software Foundation has someone who helps run the project centrally, taking into account community feedback to identify problem areas, while dealing with backlogs so that more time could be devoted to introducing important features and changes in Python.

“The most important thing, really, is to have visibility into the parts of Python that need the most help, the parts that have the most problems. Even if they're not open at this point, we need to see which parts of Python get the most churns, ”Łukasz Langa explains.

We want to see where the most take-out requests are coming from, and we want to see where most take-out requests get stuck - for example, because the library they're targeting doesn't have a maintainer within. the team. "

It is also crucial that a developer works full time on Python to keep it in step with other programming languages that are already very successful or rapidly gaining ground. "It's very important to stay relevant - with all these new languages being driven by companies like Go, Swift and Rust, [which] are gaining popularity very quickly because there is a motivated team behind each of them," concludes the developer.