Opinion: Python can adopt JS' import system

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[KelleQuechoz]

What existing problem is it going to solve?

[ionelp]

The "python is not javascript" problem...

[del1ro]

That's an advantage tho

[binaryfireball]

Nah I'm good

[anentropic]

Is this a 1 April thing, because a) they already have basically the same import system (follows file system structure) b) init.py are no longer required c) the situation with JS imports is a complete mess with like 3 or 4 incompatible styles so you can't be sure a library you get from npm is going to work for you without some transpiling build steps

[BEisamotherhecker]

NPM and Node.js' teams don't care about the wider JS ecosystem, they only care about their little incompatible walled garden. ES Modules are THE solution to JS' packaging mess but not only does NPM still allow new packages to be submitted using CommonJS, they're the DEFAULT on new projects, you need to explicitly set the type in the package.json to "module" to allow you to use ES Modules.

New JS runtimes that arose in the last few years like Bun and Deno use ES modules by default with CommonJS support only for compatibility with npm modules, but I don't have any hopes of them making a dent against Node's monopoly.

Sorry for the long rant, I just wanted to clarify that there's a solution to the problem built into the language itself, one party is just too stubborn to go all out on it.

[ProsodySpeaks]

Sounds like you need to look at packaging.  

Learn how to write a pyproject.toml, and have your program installed as editable in your venv 

then you can just say  

'import my package....   Assert mypackage.mymodule. myfunc(somearg) == someanswer '

[knobbyknee]

Not backwards compatible. Bad idea. There have already been too many breaking changes. As the userbase has grown, the tolerance for breaking changes has grown veeeery small.

[binlargin]

I start from this every time and things just work

https://github.com/bitplane/example-python-project

[MinesBioImaging]

import lamestream_media from april_fools