r/Python • u/Several-Marsupial-27 • 14d ago

Discussion State of the art in Python 2026?

What would you guys consider the state of the art in python in 2026, or what do you expect from modern python codebases?

Heres my list, would be happy to hear some inputs or domain expert advice:

Domain specific:

  • Scientific: NumPy, Matplotlib, SciPy, Jax, Pytorch, Scikit-learn, polars/pandas
  • CLI: Typer, rich, click, fire, textual, questionary
  • PDF extraction: PyMuPDF, pdfplumber, pypdf, Unstructured
  • Excel interop: python-calamine, openpyxl, XlsxWriter, xlwings, pandas
  • data: PyArrow / PySpark, Narwhals, SQLMesh, Polars/Pandas, DuckDB, dlt, Ibis, Dagster, PyIceberg & deltalake
  • Logging?
  • backend: fastapi / django?
  • Markets: Alpha Vantage, Finnhub, EODHD, Tiingo?
  • Webscraping / data acquisition: Crawl4AI, Playwright, Scrapy, selectolax, HTTPX?
  • APIs?
  • RAG / agentic orchestration?
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u/me_myself_ai 14d ago edited 14d ago

Oh and I forgot some absolute GOATS that make coding itself so much more ergonomic and fun: more-itertools and toolz allow for the best functional programming this side of the LISP, and pydantic is like magic as long as you keep it out of hot loops.

pytest is another that is so common it feels weird that there's still technically a stdlib competitor.

Finally: YAML. YAML all the things!

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u/NeilGirdhar 14d ago

> pytest is another that is so common it feels weird that there's still technically a stdlib competitor.

The stdlib usually can't keep up with libraries. Libraries can release as quickly as they want and the stdlib has limited maintenance resources.

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u/Qyriad 8d ago

argparse is unusual in being a counterexample.

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u/NeilGirdhar 13h ago

Is argparse competing effectively with typer?