[pypy-sprint] Introduction: Pat Maupin

[Patrick Maupin]

I always feel awkward standing up and rambling on about
myself while everybody is staring at me, but here goes:

My name is Patrick Maupin.  I am a Texan who is married to a
lovely English lady, and we have been planning a Christmas
trip to take the kids to see Grandma and Granddad for awhile.

When I saw that the end of the next PyPy sprint lines up exactly
with when we were planning to be in England, and saw that I could
get a roundtrip flight from Manchester to Amsterdam for a very
small amount of money, I decided that my family could fly to
Manchester without me (they've done it before), and I could take
an extra week in Amsterdam.  If my programming skills do not
match the job requirements, I'll just spend the week sightseeing :)


So, following Holger's original format:

1) I should be arriving in Amsterdam on the afternoon
of Dec. 14th, and will be leaving very early on the
morning of the 22nd.

2) I have been programming for a living since 1980.  This
has mostly been embedded and device-driver level code.  I
also do some digital hardware design.

I first started playing with Python in 1997, first used it
for serious work in 1998, and first started using it on
a very regular basis in early 2000.  (From the viewpoint
of someone dabbling in it, they kept changing it on me :)

Currently, I use Python for simulation and unit tests, for
a couple of homegrown make systems, for a source code browser
(converts internal assembly language to HTML pages, but is
horribly out of date), for downloading/controlling hardware,
and for a linker and some assembly language tools.

I have used Pyrex quite a lot, both for hardware interfacing
(parallel port, USB controller) and for performing some low-level
text processing.

3) (if you know already a list of areas you
   like to work on)
   - implementing Python Interpreter in Python
   - building infrastructure (automated testing, 
     issue-tracking, etc.), release schemes
   - porting C-modules to Python (e.g. builtins)
   - working on parser/compiler-technology 
   - exploring calling C-level libraries from Python
     (without intermediate C-compiler if feasible).

I don't have any specific PyPy experience, and will
probably not have time to gain much (except to perform
the minimal recommendations in the Wiki) before the sprint.

I would suspect that of the original list, the item
I would least be useful for immediately is the parser/
compiler technology, because I've never poked around
in the compiler, and would suspect that the working
set of knowledge necessary to be able to contribute
to this is larger than for most of the other tasks.

As far as accomodations are concerned,  I saw mention
of a "group reservation" at a youth hostel.  This would
suit me fine.  Otherwise, I expect to hear from my boss
by Thursday whether the purpose of the trip is sufficiently
business-like for me to be thinking about staying in a
nice hotel, or whether they will realize that it's all
fun and games and then I have to decide how much I'm willing
to spend.

Regards,
Pat