It's been a week since its release Python 3.11 — and it's "faster than ever!" says Jay Miller, a developer on Microsoft's six-member "Faster CPython" team.
The team also includes Python creator Guido van Rossum who offers assistance to other core developers. Miller reports that Python 3.11 "already has speedups of 10-60%".
How the team came together:
In 2020, Core Developer Mark Shannon wrote an implementation plan to accelerate Python that he called CPython. This plan proposed a 4-step process that, as Python creator Guido van Rossum says, "was too much of an effort for a volunteer to carry out."
"From the beginning, my thinking was good, we should try to see if Microsoft can hire Mark and a small team of people to support him." Last year, Van Rossum joined Microsoft as a distinguished engineer. "It was an important effort but it was too big for one person."
Microsoft was open to the idea and created a team of 6 engineers, including Van Rossum. This team was helping other core developers to support the original design.
The original 4 stage design has continued to evolve to have continuous optimizations for years to come.
"To make something as smooth as possible, you have to think in smaller steps." says team member Michael Droettboom. Droettboom works on long-term projects in the scientific community. He works for space telescope Hubble and lastly for the space telescope James Webb...
"We're hoping we can bring some knowledge from really big proprietary systems to what we're developing for the Community." says Droettboom in a post on Microsoft's deb blog.
You can learn more about it what the Faster CPython team has in mind for version 3.12 at her ideas repo on Github.
