March 9, 2026
Code faster, rage harder
Python's Lazy Imports: Why It Took Three Years and Two Attempts
Python finally speeds up, but readers say the article was written by a robot selling ads
TLDR: Python is adding a feature to start programs faster by loading tools only when needed, backed by big-company success stories. But the crowd mostly drags the article itself as ad-filled, bloated, and probably AI-written, turning a performance upgrade into a fight over bad writing and robot reporters.
Python is adding a new “lazy import” trick so apps don’t waste time loading huge tools just to print a simple help message, and giant companies like Instagram and Wall Street trading firm HRT are already bragging about apps starting in seconds instead of minutes. That should be the big news… but the community has locked onto something else entirely: they hate how this story was written.
One top comment rolls in like a Yelp review from hell: the writing is “unbearable” and the site is stuffed with scammy ads, turning a serious speed‑boost story into a rage‑scroll. Another reader wonders if the shiny new feature could actually freeze programs when two parts try to lazily grab each other at the same time, but that sensible concern gets drowned out by pure drama. The real plot twist? Multiple people are convinced the article wasn’t even written by a human. One calls it “clearly written by a gippity,” another flat-out says the patterns scream “LLM” (large language model, basically a chat bot) and uses that to dismiss the whole thing. The result feels less like a tech discussion and more like a roast: Python gets faster, but the article gets dragged for being bloated, robotic, and thirsty for ad money.
Key Points
- •Python’s eager import behavior causes significant startup delays for CLI tools that import heavy libraries, even when those libraries are not used.
- •Large organizations like Meta/Instagram and Hudson River Trading independently implemented lazy imports by forking CPython to solve these performance issues.
- •Meta’s Cinder fork, used by Instagram, combined lazy imports with a JIT compiler and achieved up to 70% faster startup times and 40% lower memory usage for real CLI tools.
- •Hudson River Trading forked CPython 3.10, cherry-picked lazy import changes from Cinder, and by Q2 2025 migrated the firm to lazy-by-default Python, reducing startup from minutes to seconds.
- •PEP 690, authored in 2022, proposed a `-L` flag and `importlib.set_lazy_imports()` API to enable lazy imports globally and replace fragile manual deferred-import patterns that harm static analysis and code structure.