Patrick Steinhardt
Software Engineer at GitLab Inc.
Berlin, Germany
Summary
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RockstarPatrick Steinhardt is a seasoned software engineer based in Berlin with 15 years of experience building and hardening low-level and backend systems. He contributes actively to high-profile open-source projects such as Git and libgit2 bindings (pygit2, git2go), improving submodule handling, ref storage, and memory safety—work that directly impacts widely used developer tooling. At GitLab he brings deep systems and build-tool expertise honed through contributions to util-linux, Meson, and a keyboard-driven browser (vimb), demonstrating comfort across C, Go, and Python ecosystems. Patrick combines pragmatic engineering—fixing panics, memory leaks, and test performance—with attention to long-term maintainability, and he’s as likely to refactor build integrations as to expose hardware-acceleration toggles. A pragmatic problem-solver, he tends to surface subtle, correctness-first fixes that quietly improve stability for thousands of users.
15 years of coding experience
Github Skills (42)
git10
libgit210
utilities10
system-programming10
python10
back-end-development10
scripting10
testing10
build-system10
internals10
c-programming10
c1110
webkit10
c1710
libgit2sharp10
Programming languages (15)
Github contributions (5)
libgit2/git2go
Jan 2015 - Feb 2022
Git to Go; bindings for libgit2. Like McDonald's but tastier.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:24 commits, 10 PRs, 2 branches in 7 years 2 months
Contributions summary:Patrick contributed to the `git2go` project, which provides bindings for libgit2 in Go. Their primary focus was on enhancing the library's functionality and addressing potential issues. Key contributions include fixing a panic in `ForeachSubmodule`, implementing the use of `HandleList` for C function callbacks in several modules, and addressing memory leaks. These changes improved the library's stability and efficiency.
golibgit2git2go
git/git
Jan 2015 - Dec 2022
Git Source Code Mirror - This is a publish-only repository but pull requests can be turned into patches to the mailing list via GitGitGadget (https://gitgitgadget.github.io/). Please follow Documentation/SubmittingPatches procedure for any of your improvements.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:16 reviews, 164 commits, 31 PRs in 8 years
Contributions summary:Patrick's commits primarily focused on the "files" backend of the Git project, including refactoring and optimizing reference storage. Their work involved extracting and extracting functions for iterating through root refs, addressing potential memory issues, and implementing a system for managing ref storage formats. These changes likely impact how references are stored and managed within Git.
codemirrorcshell
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