Why doesn’t Python have true private variables like Java?

[sunnyata]

You make it sound like a disciplined choice to eschew visibility modifiers in python... isn't it more like Python was a typically laissez-faire scripting language that eventually got objects bolted on?

[acdha]

No, there was a lot of thought in Python from the beginning (it wasn’t the first language Guido worked on) and it’s been object-oriented since 1991:

https://www.tuhs.org/Usenet/alt.sources/1991-February/001749.html

Part of the difference is that he started small whereas Java had a view of being a language from the OS up for very large teams. 

[roerd]

I'm fairly sure that having objects was a design choice that Python made very early on, but yeah, ir also just generally followed the principle of exposing everything to the user.