Published May 18, 2026
This year one of my goals for PyCon US was to make my first contribution to CPython. I specifically waited because I know that with a project
this size there is a not small amount of porcess around pushing changes and that the process - especially for a first time contributor - is
often significantly more complex than any "good first issue". I was right and I am very glad I waited. Between debugging an issue that was
causing OpenSSL to not link properly (turned out to be an issue in my .zshrc files) and handling the things that are needed to just push up
a PR, the process took much longer than the code change.
This morning, I walked into Seaside Ballroom B, where the CPython team was sprinting, and found someone to give me some instruction. I looked
at the issues that they suggested were good to sprint on and settled on this issue. I did the
code change, did the docs change, added the blurb for the changelog, and pushed up the PR.
Since then I've fixed the issues that arose (thankfully none were of the "crossing T" or "dotting i" variety, they were all substantive) and
am now waiting on the final set of tests to finish (3 approvals, including from the core developer who is the lead for that part of the code.)
Once the tests pass and it merges, I can say, "Code I have written will be in CPython 3.16!" I can already say that I made my first
contribution and I am very proud of that, small as it may be.
* As I was proofreading this the PR was merged!