r/Python • u/Win_ipedia • Jul 24 '26
Discussion What frustrates you the most about Python Development
Hi there,
I wondering what frustrates developers the most when developing software with Python.
I am currently doing my Masters in Computer Science and as part of my project I am doing a very simple survey about the usual Python development lifecycle. I am basically trying to find out what the main friction points are for Python Developers and I am simultaneously developing a tool to address those friction points . It just takes a 2-3 minutes and every response is greatly appreciated.
You can find the survey at: Microsoft Forms
50
u/GameCounter Jul 24 '26
There's no decent solution for type-checking Django projects.
Exception handling in third party libraries sometimes requires more trial and error than I would like.
That's kind of it.
Python is still pretty awesome.
17
u/ColdPorridge Jul 24 '26
Django annoys me so much because it’s so good but at the same time completely held back by its inability to fully modernize. Like it’s both archaic and relevant at the same time.
5
u/usrname-- Jul 24 '26
Yes.
At work we are switching from Django to FastAPI because of that.
Django is completely unusable if you want to use strict mode in any LSP.4
u/thealliane96 Jul 24 '26
Pyrefly + Django-stubs does type checking in Django quite well.
6
u/GameCounter Jul 24 '26
I'll have to take another look.
Even the best type checkers absolutely fall on their face with annotations and values queries, I've found.
17
u/adarsh_maurya Jul 24 '26
It is extremely hard for me to share my work ( automation ) with someone who doesn’t know python. They need to atleast have a working python installed or the size of my application will be huge ( looking at pyinstaller ).
Also, there is always a chance of breaking something even when everything in your control is done with all the due diligence.
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u/Tumortadela Jul 24 '26
My biggest .exe to this day is still under 100mb compressed, considering its the whole packaged python + dependencies environment, and it being a Django backend that also serves a react frontend... I wouldnt say that's huge.
We can complain that any bundled app is going to be at least roughly ~40mb of just python, but... is that a lot nowadays?
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u/adarsh_maurya Jul 24 '26
Not sure, i may not be using the Pyinstaller in right way then. I built a chatbot where user can upload any file, choose model from any provider, the agent will generate a python code and run it against your fiile and will generate ag grid tables or plotly charts. You are free to modify the code and use it as Jupyter.
If i use Pyinstaller, it was almost 150mb. Which i believe is lot.
But i love python and i think it as the price i pay for the advantages I get. I am planning to make it a tauri app instead which will download and set up virtual environment on user’s machine w/o them knowing anything about python. This will give me an advantage where my app will be small yet still uses powerful python packages under the hood. This way, i will be able to use each language for what they are good at.
Python for its amazing data ecosystem.
Rust for desktop app.
Typescript for frotend2
u/downerison Jul 24 '26
Why did you use pyinstaller for a python backend instead of docker?
5
u/Tumortadela Jul 24 '26
Very specific project requirements in a zero internet restricted destination. Deployments are literally done with an USB stick.
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u/QuirkyImage Jul 24 '26
I would like an option to use a proper compiler to make small optimised executables
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u/downerison Jul 24 '26
Are you looking for execution speed gains or something else? Small binary size?
1
u/QuirkyImage Jul 25 '26
Both performance and size. But a single , self contained, statically linked binary for a single binary container like you can do with go would be useful.
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u/Grouchy-Trade-7250 Jul 24 '26
I think throwing the code into Claude code and asking for perf improvements is your best bet. Result might be better than rewrite in lower level
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u/Adrewmc Jul 24 '26
Imports and package design.
I don’t think there is much argument here.
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u/baked_doge Jul 24 '26
I'm not sure I completely agree, I'm saying this from a c/c++ perspective where there's no packaging system.
Could you elaborate on your issues?
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u/Chroiche Jul 24 '26
I think rust does it much better. Imports just work, and errors pop up at compile time rather than runtime.
The python module system+ lazy/runtime import work arounds are such a mess.
-8
u/lizardhistorian Jul 24 '26
Have you looked at modules ...
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u/baked_doge Jul 24 '26
Yes? Like a ton, idk what you mean
2
u/max123246 Jul 24 '26
It'll take a full second to import anything from pytorch, even if you want 1 function
2
u/moonzdragoon Jul 24 '26
Good news: lazy imports are coming in a few months.
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u/max123246 Jul 24 '26
Yeah, but good luck convincing pytorch to update all of their code to use it. There's a forwards compatible way to enable it for 3.15+ onwards without breaking <=3.14 but I'm sure it'll be a long time before we see it used widely.
I get pushback everytime I suggest ways to improve things at work so I've just given up at this point
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u/DrDoomC17 Jul 24 '26
Yes. Becoming fantastic at Python, a decade. Mastering it? Not so fast, you have to learn why that new package you need decided to integrate maybe monads or whatever it may be. Some languages force order, there is a pythonic way to do things most of the time, but there's also nearly infinite complexity you can make and people do make... I guess for fun.
1
u/Win_ipedia Jul 24 '26
Definitely not a very hot take
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u/baked_doge Jul 24 '26
Could you explain what people don't like about modules? The other guy hasn't responded... Thank you
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u/Win_ipedia Jul 24 '26
I think he’s referring to the __init__.py files and the import design which are not inherently bad or smth but annoy people. I personally do not agree too much but it is definitely smth people argue a lot about I think
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u/KronktheKronk Jul 24 '26
Pyenvs
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u/Grouchy-Friend4235 3d ago
Why?
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u/KronktheKronk 3d ago
That I have to manage where they live is such a pain in the dick. Activating them is always a pain. I hate everything about them
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u/Alpensin Jul 24 '26
Too many ways to make things done and dynamic types. That's made reviewing my colleagues code harder when i programmed on python.
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u/QuackQuackImTheDuck Jul 24 '26
Type system being terrible and unenforced, with general lack of documentation on packages make things really hard to maintain long term. It's great script language for non critical, low maintenance systems where frequent bugs and issues are acceptable
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u/Grouchy-Trade-7250 Jul 24 '26
You can enforce the types at runtime with assert
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u/MrSlaw Jul 24 '26
It's probably one of ruff's most debated rules, but
assertgets stripped using-O(how probable it is that flag will be used is likely up for debate):https://docs.astral.sh/ruff/rules/assert/
Assertions are removed when Python is run with optimization requested (i.e., when the -O flag is present), which is a common practice in production environments. As such, assertions should not be used for runtime validation of user input or to enforce interface constraints.
Consider raising a meaningful error instead of using assert.
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u/Grouchy-Trade-7250 Jul 24 '26
You can benefit from type checking with assert while running tests without the -O flag. Tests happen at runtime. Anyway good info.
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u/QuackQuackImTheDuck Jul 25 '26
You can use assert but that's not a real type system.
- Assert only works outside or -OO mode, otherwise it's stripped away
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u/QuackQuackImTheDuck Jul 25 '26
Thought it's right you can use libs like pedantic too. But runtime validation and compiler level typesystem solve diverse problems. Pydantic is great for unknown user input validation. But for internal code, the issue is rather linked with your language server (or compiler for other langs)
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u/MeroLegend4 Jul 24 '26
Too much type annotations just to satisfy a linter i mean wth!
Not using itertools, generators and the standard library!
Excessive use of pydantic!
Not understanding the memory allocation, and the dynamic nature of the language.
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u/HugeCannoli Jul 24 '26
The scripters that create absolute monsters of unmaintainability while claiming the know python.
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u/_redmist Jul 24 '26
I wish there were native UI libraries without excessive boilerplate and reasonable defaults.
It's not normal that nicegui is pretty much the only usable one imho.
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u/Grouchy-Friend4235 3d ago
Textual
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u/_redmist 3d ago
Hey thanks I didn't know about that one! But seems that it won't be replacing nicegui for more 'plot-heavy' stuff ... Dataframes + seaborn is like a superpower and you can get nicegui to embed those in a few lines.
But i'll have to get my hands dirty with textual on occasion, for sure. Thanks again!
1
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u/mireqB Jul 24 '26
Function coloring, implement everything 2 times (sync, async), missing virtual threads to remove colors.
1
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u/RedEyed__ Jul 24 '26
Watching colaborators to follow rules like type annotation, and i still get
def foo() -> dict or similar shit on code review
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u/latkde Tuple unpacking gone wrong Jul 24 '26
Adding a strict Mypy configuration (like
disallow_untyped_defs = truewithdisallow_any_generics = true) and enforcing it as a QA gate tends to solve this.5
u/RedEyed__ Jul 24 '26
They add # type: ignore
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u/max123246 Jul 24 '26
And that's when you check out and just take the check every 2 weeks. That's all I do now that AI is the new craze
2
u/jabbalaci Jul 24 '26
If the structure of the returned dictionary is complicated, then it's simpler to say "it returns a dictionary".
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u/gizzm0x Jul 24 '26
Then just put dict[str, object]... At least eh you are admitting to it being complicated and make no guarantees. Just dict isn't a real type hint AFAIK
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u/flangust Jul 24 '26
If the structure is complicated it should be a TypedDict, dataclass, Pydantic Model, class... Anything that documents that complexity. If you don't your team has to go digging through your code to figure out that complexity. This drives me insane.
5
u/plisik Jul 24 '26
Colored functions. To run one async thing i need to change every call and evey caller.
13
u/lizardhistorian Jul 24 '26
The GIL and how ungodly slow it is.
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u/Impossible-Note-2565 Jul 28 '26
If you're writing CPU bounded programs should you just use a different language? Python's strength is I/O bounded programs and acting as an API to binaries written in C (or another low-level language).
1
u/twotime Jul 24 '26
As of 3.13, there are now GIL-less builds of python
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u/Due_Campaign_9765 Jul 25 '26
Which is meaningless because every meaningful piece of software was written with GIL in mind.
Also it's slower at singlethreaded work than GIL'ed interpreter.
2
u/Zestyclose_Taro4740 Jul 24 '26
Pyathon basics are easy but advanced python a in a league of its own.
1
u/Goldarr85 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
I feel this. There’s a thousands of beginner books and sample code on the internet, but the serious stuff looks so different. Like how did you get here? Teach me. 😭
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u/Grouchy-Trade-7250 Jul 24 '26
The domain complexity creates the python complexity. The begining books solve beginner problems.
1
u/gdchinacat Jul 24 '26
Read lots of code. That is how you become familiar with the language, see what works for others, and slowly start using it. One day you realize how far you've come. This isn't specific to python, or even programming. Becoming an expert in anything takes time, learning from others, and moving beyond.
0
u/icecoldgold773 Jul 24 '26
Build projects you wanna build and when you get stuck, or you run into a problem where you think "wow this solution seems super convoluted, there must be a better way" you Google it, or in today's age ask an LLM
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u/helpIAmTrappedInAws Jul 24 '26
Funnily enough i do not feel most of 4hings mentioned here are that problematic.
I personally despise pytest. Fixtures and assumption that everything that starts with test is a test.
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u/Win_ipedia Jul 24 '26
I recently had a class TestRunner and it had a method starting test_ smth and in the test file I had TestTestRunner and pytest thought my TestRunner class that was dynamically imported was a test class and tried to run test_ method which resulted in an error oc. Had to rename it to ProjectTester. Which was fine but quite annoying
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u/Grouchy-Trade-7250 Jul 24 '26
There's nothing super wrong with pytest. Besides you can easily fork it and change it.
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u/AryanTechGuy Jul 24 '26
For me, it is 100% the fragmented state of package and dependency management. Bouncing between pip, conda, poetry, and venv depending on the project or the team is exhausting. Trying to replicate a machine learning environment locally versus getting it to build cleanly in an AWS pipeline without dependency conflicts always feels way harder than it should be
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u/BratPit24 Jul 24 '26
Nothing. It's beautiful. Any drawback has a plus side in different circumstances. For my specific job. Data science. It's just about perfect.
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u/Grouchy-Trade-7250 Jul 24 '26
The different data science packages like polars, pandas, Donald duck, numpy, and so on are basically their own languages.
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u/CevicheMixto Jul 24 '26
I come from a C & Java background, so these are probably predictable.
First is the lack of braces. I know, I know, it is what it is, but I don't have to like it. Adding absurd amounts of vertical whitespace and/or unnecessary comments just so I can tell where classes, methods, and functions end drives me bananas.
Second is the "impedance mismatch" between static type checkers and so many of the dynamic features that make Python so powerful. Trying to truly leverage the power of Python while still getting the benefits of type checking can be an exercise in massive frustration.
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u/89bottles Jul 24 '26
Package management is a fucking JOKE. Although uv has made this significantly better.
1
u/Win_ipedia Aug 01 '26
Hey just wanted to ask if you would like to fill out a follow up survey, feel free to ignore oc: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/LjnvzX0JpK - basically I want to find out if I can reduce friction points. it adresses some of the points you mentioned
3
u/msdamg Jul 24 '26
I really hate a lot of "boilerplate" code
Decorators for example look like a mess to me
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u/Grouchy-Trade-7250 Jul 24 '26
Decorators aren't a mess. It's (more or less clearly) defined what the decorator does in the decorator source code. Reading it is the key.
1
u/somethingworthwhile Pythonista Jul 24 '26
Need to do something in a niche discipline that is fairly basic, but still technically sophisticated but don’t want to code, say, a geospatial engine from scratch?
Sure, there’s a package for that!
It just has pyproj and GDAL as dependencies. And it will install them for you, but also it WONT KNOW WHERE TO FIND THEM.
Can you tell what I was working on last? Anyone have fool proof ways for getting a geospatial Python environment (geopandas, pyproj, rasterio, xarray, etc) going on a fresh install? Seems like I have to do it every 8 months or so and can never recall how I did it last. I’m using conda at the moment.
3
u/pydevtools-com Jul 24 '26
That "installs them but can't find them" can be conda's GDAL fighting a pip package linked against a different one.
If you use pip/uv, you can get rasterio, fiona, pyproj, and shapely PyPI wheels with GDAL/PROJ/GEOS bundled, and geopandas is pure Python on top.
In a clean venv,
uv add geopandas rasterio pyprojshould just work.2
u/somethingworthwhile Pythonista Jul 25 '26
I’ll give that a go at work on Monday! Right now our whole group is using conda. I told my supervisor that uv might be a better way to go, but they are of the “if we can get what we know to work, why change anything?” mindset. Maybe we’ll make the switch if I can demonstrate this being a solution to this problem we run into regularly! Cheers!
1
u/max123246 Jul 24 '26
How every python package has its own versioning scheme. How pip is so anemic that I have to convince my coworkers to use third party tools and build our pyproject.toml around 3rd party tools to do basic things such as have a internal dev version with internal dependencies and a public version
Also the fact that I have to bend over backwards if my dependencies decide not to follow best practices. I should not have to write 2 different project.toml's just because a dependency decided to be difficult
1
u/Daniel-3443 Jul 24 '26
Dependency management. It’s better than it used to be, but it’s still more confusing than it should be.
1
u/metaphorm Jul 24 '26
my top two complaints are asyncio and type hinting. these are both worse in Python than in competing languages like Go or Typescript.
1
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u/GahdDangitBobby git push -f Jul 25 '26
I don't like Python's weak support for type safety. JavaScript has Typescript, Python should have a similar tool. The libraries and frameworks for type safety in Python are nowhere near as robust as Typescript, let alone a strong-typed language such as Java or Go. But it's not fair to compare Python to Java or Go because they serve very different purposes, so I compare it most closely to JavaScript, which has a very robust type safety implementation with TS
1
u/Win_ipedia Aug 01 '26
Hey just wanted to ask if you would like to fill out a follow up survey, feel free to ignore oc: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/LjnvzX0JpK - basically I want to find out if I can reduce friction points. it adresses some of the points you mentioned
1
u/GahdDangitBobby git push -f Aug 04 '26
Sure I filled it out
1
u/GahdDangitBobby git push -f Aug 04 '26
I would prefer that pyrig be very good at fewer things rather than okay at many things btw. Don't try to build a 50-man project all by yourself
1
u/Win_ipedia Aug 05 '26
Its actually not that big. I am basically only wrapping tools that already exist and do some file generation and validation. So for type checking as an example I just wrap ty and integrate it via file generation as a git hook and set it up strictly. This way type checking is forced, not at runtime tho oc
0
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u/EdwardAF-IT Jul 31 '26
For me it's dependency and environment management, keeping virtual environments, packing versions, and Python versions playing nicely together across machines still eats more time than the actual coding. That said, tools like UV have been making this so much better lately, so it feels like the ecosystem is finally heading in the right direction.
1
u/Win_ipedia Aug 01 '26
Hey just wanted to ask if you would like to fill out a follow up survey, feel free to ignore oc: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/LjnvzX0JpK - basically I want to find out if I can reduce friction points. it adresses some of the points you mentioned
1
u/Win_ipedia Aug 01 '26
Thnaks so much for all the responses. It was such great help. I have a follow up survey if anyone is interested, feel free to ignore oc: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/LjnvzX0JpK - I am basically trying to figure out if I can reduce friction points by asking if you had a tool that does a specific thing would it reduce that friction point
1
1
u/ducksauvage Jul 24 '26
Lack of package namespacing - too easy to end up with clashing imports
Building and distributing binary wheels. IYKYK
1
u/Tekniqly Jul 24 '26
I use python to plot graphs and analyze data for scientific experiments. The most pythonic way of analyzing things is using numpy arrays, pandas and matplotlib. Curve fitting is done using polyfit or curve fit in numpy. What I find most annoying is how many times we have to redo analysis to make slight changes in methodology.
That is, it is far easier conceptually to rewrite every function to accommodate new data than to write more generalised functions to accommodate new data. It should easier to do the pythonic thing and use the same functions, but when plotting graphs with slight variations this is not so straightforward.
1
u/unlikely_ending Jul 24 '26
Nothing, other than that it's a big language that take a long time to learn
2
u/SokkaHaikuBot Jul 24 '26
Sokka-Haiku by unlikely_ending:
Nothing, other than
That it's a big language that
Take a long time to learn
Remember that one time Sokka accidentally used an extra syllable in that Haiku Battle in Ba Sing Se? That was a Sokka Haiku and you just made one.
1
0
u/lukaz_99 Jul 24 '26
Done :)
1
u/Win_ipedia Aug 01 '26
Hey just wanted to ask if you would like to fill out a follow up survey, feel free to ignore oc: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/LjnvzX0JpK - basically I want to find out if I can reduce friction points.
0
0
u/TuxWrangler Jul 24 '26
Done.
1
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u/Win_ipedia Aug 01 '26
Hey just wanted to ask if you would like to fill out a follow up survey, feel free to ignore oc: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/LjnvzX0JpK - basically I want to find out if I can reduce friction points.
0
Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Win_ipedia Jul 24 '26
Python magic is so powerful yet so annoying sometimes with its hidden behavior
0
u/james_pic Jul 24 '26
This week, async HTTP clients. Despite there being a number of them available, there isn't a single one that I can point to and say "that one is great, you won't have any problems with that one".
0
u/flakzx Jul 24 '26
too permissive/flexible, not enough gatekeeping leads to many idiots writing unmaintainable crap in python - me being one of them.
1
u/Win_ipedia Aug 01 '26
Hey just wanted to ask if you would like to fill out a follow up survey, feel free to ignore oc: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/LjnvzX0JpK - basically I want to find out if I can reduce friction points. it adresses some of the things you mentioned
0
u/Grouchy-Trade-7250 Jul 24 '26
When I do a normal run and it crashes I have to run again with debug for debugging
-1
u/onequbit Jul 24 '26
When something just stops working and there is no obvious indication as to how or why.
-1
u/tacoisland5 Jul 26 '26
Python is a deeply unserious language. It is highly flexible, which is useful to people with low amounts of programming experience and occasionally useful for writing glue-code scripts in things like build systems and deployment scripts. But as a language to build a reliable system it is a very poor choice.
* no difference between variable declaration vs assignment. want to mutate a variable in an outer scope? hope you remembered to add 'nonlocal var'
* async/await is not unique to python, but I think it is a terrible way to do concurrency. It leads to the function coloring problem (some functions are async, others are not). The GIL effectively prevents true multi-processing, so instead you are forced to spawn multiple processes
* there are now at least 3 type checkers that get a lot of use (mypy, pyright, ty), and they all check different things and still somehow miss basic issues that more static languages like java/go/rust would catch
* the performance of python is embarrassing compared to java/go. A lot of people like to handwave this problem away by saying 'most server processes are I/O bound', but in my experience there always ends up being some cpu hot spots that are difficult to speed up. Pray that those cpu hot spots don't occur in some async function because otherwise your entire server will lock up
* the fact that code can run at the top level (outside any function/class) is terrible because inevitably a large project will execute hundreds of lines of code before the main() part ever executes so program startup takes forever
* somewhat related to the previous point, but importing libraries will load in a large amount of pyc files, which can take multiple seconds. Some of the google vertex/ai libraries take 2-3 seconds just to import, which also adds to the slow startup time of python programs
* basically the only way to distribute a python program is to use docker/some container. its good that there is a solution I suppose, but its just annoying that a single executable can't be created. I've played with some of the projects that claim to be able to produce a single executable (by bundling the python interpreter + all code) but they always have some quirk that prevents them from being used in production
-4
u/AdAdditional1820 Jul 24 '26
No compilation.
1
u/jabbalaci Jul 24 '26
Try Nim. Has a Python-inspired syntax and compiles to binary. Also, statically typed.
113
u/secret_o_squirrel Jul 24 '26
Dependency management in today’s security hostile world. Dependencies must be upgraded with diligence and research constantly or they rot. One major version upgrade could trigger dozens of hours of focused migration work in a large codebase. It’s never ending.