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black
Python2018–2026
psf / black

black

The uncompromising Python code formatter

79Distinct people
83Mentions
3Explicit recommenders
42.2KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

The uncompromising Python code formatter

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

I don't see the black python formatter[0] mentioned. I use it for all of my projects and I love it as I prefer not to have a linter distract me while I type. You can see a…

reportgunner used a recommendation phrase. 3 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 7:24:48 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year83 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2018-03-14 21:57:08 UTC to 2026-09-30 22:50:00 UTC.

0510152018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 11 mentions; 5 submissions, 6 comments20182019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 16 mentions; 2 submissions, 14 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 9 mentions; 0 submissions, 9 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 14 mentions; 3 submissions, 11 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 16 mentions; 3 submissions, 13 comments20222023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 1 submissions, 6 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 1 submissions, 4 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1156
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC16214
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC909
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC14311
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC16313
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC716
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC514

What Hacker News says

2 sources
Coming from a Meta background (not speaking on behalf of Meta): "package/dependency management" - Everything is checked into a monorepo, and built with [Buck2](https://buck2.build/). There's tooling to import/update packages, but no need to reinvent pip or other package managers. Btw, Buck2 is pretty awesome and supports a ton of languages beyond python, but hasn't gotten a ton of traction outside of Meta. "linting, formatting" - [Black](https://github.com/psf/black) and other public ecosystem tooling is great, no need to develop internally. "why is type checking the exception" - Don't know about Astral, but for Meta / Google, most everyone else doesn't design for the scale of their monorepos. Meta moved from SVN to Git to Mercurial, then forked Mercurial into [Sapling](https://sapling-scm.com/) because simple operations were too slow for
Read the rest
the number of files in their repo, and how frequently they receive diffs. There are obvious safety benefits to type checking, but with how much Python code Meta has, mypy is not an option - it would take far too much time / memory to provide any value.
In Pyrefly vs. Ty: Comparing Python's two new Rust-based type checkers
> I appreciate that Black annoyed everyone on our team about the same amount but in different ways. If it did affect people equally, it would be great. Unfortunately, spaces for indentation is an accessibility issue and the Black maintainers are hostile to making this configurable. Normally I am in agreement about minimising configurability, but this isn’t a matter of taste, it is making the Python ecosystem more difficult for some disabled people to participate in. https://github.com/psf/black/issues/2798 Fortunately, Ruff makes this configurable, so you don’t have to choose between autoformatting and accessibility any more.
In Ruff: Python linter and code formatter written in Rust

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