This post is part of the "Meet the Team" series of posts, which is meant to give a brief introduction to the Python core development team.
| Name: | Brian Curtin |
|---|---|
| Location: | Chicago, IL |
| Home Page: | http://blog.briancurtin.com/ |
How long have you been using Python?
On a day to day basis going on 6 years. Prior to that I used it occasionally for a class in college and also at a summer internship.
How long have you been a core committer?
Just over a year. March 24 marked my first year with the group.
How did you get started as a core developer? Do you remember your first commit?
I got started after noticing a documentation bug while writing an extension module at work, then I submitted a simple patch and Georg Brandl committed it almost immediately. After having that quick success and a fresh source checkout, I wanted to dive in and learn more about the modules I was using and ended up writing a patch to add context manager support to zipfile.
The first few commits I made were documentation fixes in order to keep it simple early on. My first code commit was to add a few features and expand test coverage in the winreg module.
Which parts of Python are you working on now?
As one of the few Windows users involved in CPython development, I try to keep an eye on whatever issues Windows users are having. Due to that, I've had a chance to work on a bunch of the standard library, including modules I hadn't used. I haven't done much with the interpreter itself, but I'm looking to change that.
What do you do with Python when you aren't doing core development work?
I build a variety of test tools for a trading database which is written in C++. There's an extension module for the data API so we can easily write regression tests, performance tests, and we're always trying to build more.
What do you do when you aren't programming?
I'm a huge baseball fan. I umpire college baseball in the spring, various leagues in the summer, and mix in watching and going to Chicago Cubs games.