The discussion centers on the death of Python contributor Tim Peters, with widespread tributes to his technical legacy like Timsort and the Zen of Python clashing with heated disagreements over his controversial suspension by the Python Software Foundation. While many users urge focusing solely on his contributions, others argue that ignoring the PSF's handling of his ban is a disservice to his memory and an endorsement of flawed community governance.
189 readable replies · Supporting reply 1 · Supporting reply 2 · Supporting reply 3 · Supporting reply 4python
cpython
Python2014–2026
python / cpython
cpython
The Python programming language
400Distinct people
547Mentions
3Explicit recommenders
78.2KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
The Python programming language
GitHub
Where it is used
- AWS Lambda — AWS Lambda provides a managed runtime and container base image for Python 3.11 that runs on CPython’s interpreter improvements. It uses CPython’s specialization adaptive interpreter features to improve Lambda workloads’ performance. Source
- abridging clinical conversations using python — “In addition to the above-mentioned instances, we also use Python widely in conjunction with several Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services and to set up other monitoring and debugging tools.” Source
- 4 more documented examples
What people are saying
I love the description in the draft PR: 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the code Not a core dev was merging, not even Guido; The CI was spun on the PRs with…
divbzero used a recommendation phrase. 3 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
Favorable Commenters discuss Tim Peters' contributions to CPython, including int-to-str conversion and Timsort. The tone is respectful and appreciative of his technical achievements.
This week’s discussion is favorable. This is not a standing endorsement. Read the supporting reply
Also in these discussions
- golang/go · linked in 2 of the same discussions
- nodejs/node · linked in 2 of the same discussions
- ruby/ruby · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Favorable
Commenters discuss Tim Peters' contributions to CPython, including int-to-str conversion and Timsort. The tone is respectful and appreciative of his technical achievements.
Supporting reply 1 · Supporting reply 2 · 2 discussions summarized
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
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Showing the three threads with the most distinct people linking this repo, from 5 threads this week.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year547 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2014-12-30 12:04:55 UTC to 2026-10-27 17:34:51 UTC.
* 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
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 20 | 2 | 18 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 36 | 4 | 32 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 28 | 2 | 26 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 33 | 4 | 29 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 54 | 2 | 52 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 62 | 3 | 59 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 63 | 6 | 57 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 64 | 4 | 60 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 70 | 6 | 64 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 72 | 6 | 66 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 40 | 5 | 35 |
What Hacker News says
63 sourcesZZzzzeek·Dec 23, 2022
that doesn't make much sense and there are necessary uses for eval() /exec(), mostly for dynamic creation of code:
For example here's Python dataclasses in the standard library using exec() to create the `__init__` and other methods that go on your dataclass:
https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/main/Lib/dataclasses....
Here's Pydantic using it for a jupyter notebook check:
https://github.com/pydantic/pydantic/blob/594effa279668bd955...
here's Pytest using it to rewrite modules so that functions like assert etc. are instrumented by pytest:
https://github.com/pytest-dev/pytest/blob/eca93db05b6c5ec101...
Here's the decorator module using it (as is the only way to do this in Python) to create a signature matching decorator for an arbitrary function:
https://github.com/micheles/decorator/blob/ad013a2c1ad796996...
All of these libraries are
Read the rest
completely secure as eval/exec are used with code fragments that are generated by the libraries, not based on untrusted input.
eval() /exec() are not running executable files, just Python code, the same way all the rest of the package is already doing.
Nope: unlike, say, sorted(), reversed() will never force an iterator into a sequence—it will either call __reversed__ or fall back to __len__ and __getitem__. An iterator needs to know how to reverse itself, or it’s out of luck. (Which is quite annoying because it forces you to write a class rather than a generator function.) Ranges are in the former category, they know how to reverse themselves[1]. (Yet for some reason range(0, 42) and range(41, -1, -1) repr themselves as range(0, 42) and range(41, -1, -1) respectively while reversed(range(0, 42)) is instead <range_iterator object at ...>. Truly, I cannot touch anything without finding a bug or at least a suspiciously insectoid lifeform.)
[1] https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/7e3f09cad9b783d8968aa...
In Always use [closed, open) intervalsIt's because cpython shortcuts through identity: https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/main/Objects/object.c...
/* Quick result when objects are the same.
Guarantees that identity implies equality. */
if (v == w) {
if (op == Py_EQ)
return 1;
else if (op == Py_NE)
return 0;
}
`math.nan` is always itself, and thus this shortcut is taken and the key works.
In Go 1.21 may have a clear(x) builtinJust copy out cgi.py and use it as a module.
https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/3.11/Lib/cgi.py
In Python 3.12.0 is to remove long-deprecated itemsI would expect them to move telnetlib to a separate, unsupported repo that you can then import.
Even if they don’t, from a cursory view, it seems it’s a pure python library (https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/main/Lib/telnetlib.py).
If so, can’t you copy the current code into your project? You would take on the burden of supporting it, but looking at https://github.com/python/cpython/commits/main/Lib/telnetlib..., that doesn’t seem to be much of a burden.
In Python 3.12.0 is to remove long-deprecated itemsI cannot suggest often enough also to look at the difflib implementation in the python stdlib
https://docs.python.org/3/library/difflib.html#difflib.Seque...
https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/main/Lib/difflib.py
In Visualizing Diffs: The Myers difference algorithm (2020)CPython: Generate the Interpreter
2 points · Open discussionAbout this new asyncio.TaskGroup thing, I found this from Guido on the related GH issue*
> After some conversations with Yury, and encouraged by the SC's approval of PEP-654, I am proposing to add a new class, asyncio.TaskGroup, which introduces structured concurrency similar to nurseries in Trio.
I have never used but have been told that Trio's nurseries make it much easier to handle exceptions in asyncio tasks. Does someone more knowledgeable can tell if this will help? Looking at the docs*, this only seems to be a helper when you want to await several tasks at once, so I am not sure this changes much for exception handling.
* https://github.com/python/cpython/issues/90908
** https://docs.python.org/3.11/library/asyncio-task.html#task-...
In Python 3.11.0 final> to allow concurrency, you should use asyncio.create_task on coro (formerly ensure_future).
This is misleading... you can use asyncio.gather which does this internally [0].
[0]: https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/main/Lib/asyncio/task...
In Python and Async Simplified (2018)Correct (actually a linked list of blocks[1]). It supports insertion and removal from both ends in O(1), which is very useful. However, it does not support insertion and removal from the middle (via an iterator) in O(1), so it's not a complete replacement for doubly-linked lists.
[1]: https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/a4ac14faa5c2be433738d...
In Algorithms and data structures implemented in many programming languagesYes, it is released [1]. This allows you to access it from multiple thread in the same interpreter though, so I still don't understand robertlagrant's question.
[1]: https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/4b81139aac3fa11779f6e...
In Faster CPython 3.12 Plan"the slow-but-simple implementation in module dbm.dumb will be used"
No kidding.
https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/main/Lib/dbm/dumb.py
It uses a text file to store keys and pointers into a binary file for values. It works .. most of the time .. but yeah, that's not going to win any speed awards.
In TIL–Python has a built-in persistent key-value store (2018)FWIW, it was added in 1992. https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/dd9ed839d6958f73704... with gdbm added in 1994. https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/4b4c664d2e93279c8d7... .
In TIL–Python has a built-in persistent key-value store (2018)Yeah, an easy solution to all these things is “find a uniformly random source that outputs in a range larger but close to what you want and then try again if it’s outside your range.
And indeed this is how Python does it
https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/e37ac5fbb6de593521cf2...
https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/e37ac5fbb6de593521cf2...
In I figured out how to get GitHub Copilot to run in the terminalThe ValueError in "2*2*2*2*2" is a recent change to limit denial of service attacks. See https://github.com/python/cpython/issues/95778 . In short, the value you want has 19729 digits in base-10, the conversion from the internal base-30 representation to base-10 cannot be done in linear time, and conversion from arbitrary-length/untrusted data input to integer is very common, making it hard to audit.
The limit of 4300 can be changed using https://docs.python.org/3.11/library/stdtypes.html#int-max-s... . Set it to 0 for unlimited. (I wonder if there will be a thread-local context for this setting in the future, or some other way to bypass the limit on an as-needed basis.)
In any case, your Python and C examples compute different values because you mistook a right-associative operator for a left-associative operator. On my Python 3.12.0a0:
Read the rest
>>> pow(pow(pow(pow(pow(2, 2), 2), 2), 2), 2)
4294967296
>>> ((((2**2)**2)**2)**2)**2
4294967296
>>> big = 2**2**2**2**2 # a**b is right-associative in Python
>>> len(str(big))
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ValueError: Exceeds the limit (4300) for integer string conversion
>>> import sys
>>> sys.set_int_max_str_digits(0)
>>> len(str(big))
19729
Your C example, when written to match your Python example, correctly gives "inf" as it is larger than the range of double, which is pow()'s return type:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <math.h>
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
printf("%.0lf\n", pow(2, pow(2, pow(2, pow(2, pow(2, 2))))));
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}
% gcc -o main -std=c18 -O2 -pipe -fPIC -fno-plt -fstack-protector-strong main.c && ./main
inf
Your C program, when written to match your Julia example for a 32-bit architecture (which uses Int32 by default), also gives 0, as it overflows 32-bit signed integers:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <math.h>
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
int value = 2;
value = value * value;
value = value * value;
value = value * value;
value = value * value;
value = value * value;
printf("%d\n", value);
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}
% gcc -o main -std=c18 -O2 -pipe -fPIC -fno-plt -fstack-protector-strong main.c && ./main
0
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