The 2016 Python Language Summit

The Python Language Summit is an annual gathering for around 50 developers of various implementations of the Python language. The one-day event is made up of short presentations and discussion of topics that cut across the entire language ecosystem, which includes the "standard" CPython implementation, as well as variants like Jython, IronPython, PyPy, Pyjion, Pyston, and more. As with last year's summit, LWN sat in on the discussions.

This year's edition was once again co-chaired by Larry Hastings and Barry Warsaw and was held in conjunction with the North American PyCon in Portland, Oregon. The fez tradition continues, but this year Hastings brought more of the hats, so many presenters and attendees were wearing them throughout the day. Here are our reports from the summit:

• The future of the ssl module: Christian Heimes and Cory Benfield discussed the standard library module for SSL/TLS encryption, its shortcomings, and their plans for the future.
• Twisted and Python 3: Amber Brown described the progress of porting the Twisted event-driven networking framework to Python 3.
• Gilectomy: Larry Hastings presented work that he has done to remove the global interpreter lock (GIL) from CPython.
• Python's GitHub migration and workflow changes: Brett Cannon updated attendees on the migration to GitHub and the workflow changes that will be coming based on that.
• The state of mypy: Guido van Rossum talked about the mypy static-analysis tool that uses the PEP 484 type hints for type checking.
• An introduction to pytype: Matthias Kramm introduced the pytype tool that does both type checking and type inference using Python's type hints.
• PyCharm and type hints: Andrey Vlasovskikh continued the "tools" theme with a description of PyCharm's support for type hints.
• Python 3.6 and 3.7 release cycles: 3.6 release manager Ned Deily explained the release cycle for Python and had some thoughts on ways it might be changed for 3.7 and beyond.
• Python 3 in Fedora: Petr Viktorin described work in Fedora to move to Python 3 by default as well as efforts to split up the standard library for cloud deployments.
• The Python JITs are coming: Nathaniel Smith presented the upcoming JIT-enabled Python world and some of the consequences of that transition.
• Pyjion: Dino Viehland and Brett Cannon introduced Pyjion, which is a JIT compiler for Python 3, along with their ideas on adding a JIT API to CPython.
• Why is Python slow?: Kevin Modzelewski described some of what causes Python to be slow that is based on his work on the Pyston JIT compiler for Python.
• Automated testing of CPython patches: Kushal Das introduced his work on automating the testing of proposed patches for CPython.
• The Python security response team: Christian Heimes discussed some of the problems that the Python security response team has been experiencing.

[ I would like to thank LWN subscribers for travel support to attend the summit in Portland. ]