The 2017 Python Language Summit

The Python Language Summit is an annual invitational gathering of Python core developers along with others who need to work out larger issues within the development community. LWN has been lucky enough to sit in on the summit for the past two years and has coverage from this year's edition as well. Roughly 40 developers attended this year's summit. As with previous years, Larry Hastings and Barry Warsaw organized the summit, but there was a wardrobe addition this year: beyond the usual fez, each wore a "[LB]arry" shirt.

A group photo of the attendees is below. I took the picture using Kushal Das's camera:

Here are the sessions covered from the summit:

• Python 3.6.x, 3.7.0, and beyond: Release manager Ned Deily updated attendees on the various releases and where they stand.
• New CPython workflow issues: Brett Cannon discussed the new CPython development workflow since the switch to GitHub for hosting the repository.
• The state of bugs.python.org: A brief presentation from Maciej Szulik on some work that has been done on bugs.python.org recently, as well as some plans for the future.
• Progress on the Gilectomy: Larry Hastings's ambitious plan to remove the global interpreter lock (GIL) from CPython continues; Hastings updated attendees on where things stand.
• Keeping Python competitive: Victor Stinner is looking for ways to make Python faster by a factor of two so that it compares favorably to its language competitors.
• Trio and the future of asynchronous execution in Python: Nathaniel Smith has been working on the Trio asynchronous library and wanted to discuss what he has learned in that process.
• Python ssl module update: ssl module co-maintainer Christian Heimes gave a roundup of changes to the module along with some idea of the future plans for it.
• Classes and types in the Python typing module: Mark Shannon wanted to discuss the wisdom of making types out of classes in typing.
• Status of mypy and type checking: Jukka Lehtosalo updated attendees on type checking and the mypy static type checker.
• Lightning talks: Half a dozen talks on various subjects including MicroPython, beta releases, Python as a security vulnerability, and Jython.