The Story of Python's Lazy Imports: Why It Took Three Years and Two Attempts
Summary
The article chronicles the journey of Python lazy imports from the failed PEP 690 to the accepted PEP 810. It details real-world pressure from large codebases like Meta and Hudson River Trading, the shift from an opt-out global lazy mode to an opt-in, proxy-based lazy loading design, and the practical implications for startup time, memory usage, and error handling in CLI and large Python projects.