David Foster
Cofounder & CTO at TechSmart Inc.
Manchester, New Hampshire, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolDavid Foster is a Cofounder and CTO with 14 years of engineering experience, leading product and technical strategy for TechSmart Inc. from Manchester, NH. He blends systems-level backend expertise with thoughtful technical writing—evident from substantive contributions to core Python projects (cpython, mypy, and the PEPS) where he implemented and documented TypedDict and PEP 655 support. A Python enthusiast and type-system practitioner, he also improved real-world libraries like the Splunk SDK by hardening parsing, auth, and documentation. Educator and digital archivist by inclination, he pairs developer-facing work with clear, maintainable documentation to reduce cognitive load for future contributors. His background includes formal CS study at Georgia Tech and TUM, and an unusual strength is translating language-level features into practical SDK and tooling improvements that improve developer experience.
14 years of coding experience
B.S., Computer Science, B.S., Computer Science at Georgia Institute of TechnologyInformatik (Computer Science), Informatik (Computer Science) at Technische Universität München
English, German, Japanese
Github Skills (20)
static-typing10
typesc10
type-check10
restructuredtext10
python10
mypy10
dynamic-typing10
splunk10
typescript10
implicit-typing10
type-system10
optional-typing10
sdk10
strong-typing10
type-checking10
Programming languages (16)
Github contributions (5)
splunk/splunk-sdk-python
Jul 2012 - Dec 2012
Splunk Software Development Kit for Python
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:36 commits in 5 months
Contributions summary:David primarily contributed to the Splunk SDK for Python, focusing on improvements to the `results` and `client` modules. Their work included enhancing the parsing of result data, specifically the '_raw' field, and refactoring and documenting various methods. The user also addressed inconsistencies in the documentation and code samples within the library. Further contributions included fixing quoting behavior and improving authentication and token handling within the SDK.
development-kitpythonsplunkpython3software-development-kit
python/mypy
Sep 2016 - Dec 2021
Optional static typing for Python
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:11 reviews, 6 commits, 7 PRs in 5 years 3 months
Contributions summary:David primarily focused on enhancing the `mypy` project by implementing and refining features related to the `TypedDict` type. Their contributions involved creating the `mypy_extensions` package, recognizing `TypedDict` declarations and instances, and supporting features like `__getitem__` and `__setitem__` access within `TypedDicts`. They also implemented support for PEP 655, including `Required[]` and `NotRequired[]` annotations within `TypedDict` definitions.
linterpythontypecheckerstatic-typing
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