3/25/2026 at 9:18:40 AM
What is it about Python that makes developers love fragmentation so much? Sending HTTP requests is a basic capability in the modern world, the standard library should include a friendly, fully-featured, battle-tested, async-ready client. But not in Python, stdlib only has the ugly urllib.request, and everyone is using third party stuff like requests or httpx, which aren't always well maintained. (See also: packaging)by Kwpolska
3/25/2026 at 10:04:48 AM
You would think that sending HTTP requests is a basic capability, but I've had fun in many languages doing so. Long ago (2020, or not so long ago, depending on how you look at it) I was surprised that doing an HTTP request on node using no dependencies was a little awkward:``` const response = await new Promise( (resolve, reject) => { const req = https.request(url, { }, res => { let body = ""; res.on("data", data => { body += data; }); res.on('end', () => { resolve(body); }); }); req.end(); });
```
by dirkc
3/25/2026 at 10:23:52 AM
These days node supports the fetch API, which is much simpler. (It wasn't there in 2020, it seems to have been added around 2022-2023.)by wging
3/25/2026 at 10:15:09 AM
HTTP client is at the intersection of "necessary software building block" and "RFC 2616 intricacies that are hard to implement". Has nothing to do with Python really.by ivanjermakov
3/25/2026 at 9:25:55 AM
> Then I found out it was broken. I contributed a fix. The fix was ignored and there was never any release since November 2024.This seems like a pretty good reason to fork to me.
> Sending HTTP requests is a basic capability in the modern world, the standard library should include a friendly, fully-featured, battle-tested, async-ready client. But not in Python,
Or Javascript (well node), or golang (http/net is _worse_ than urllib IMO), Rust , Java (UrlRequest is the same as python's), even dotnet's HttpClient is... fine.
Honestly the thing that consistently surprises me is that requests hasn't been standardised and brought into the standard library
by maccard
3/25/2026 at 9:31:30 AM
Your java knowledge is outdated. Java's JDK has a nice, modern HTTP Client https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/11/docs/api/java.net....by lenkite
3/25/2026 at 10:01:48 AM
What, Go's net/http is fantastic. I don't understand that take. Many servers are built on it because it's so fully featured out of the box.by francislavoie
3/25/2026 at 10:47:34 AM
> dotnet's HttpClient is... fine.Yes, and it's in the standard library (System namespace). Being Microsoft they've if anything over-featured it.
by pjc50
3/25/2026 at 9:35:20 AM
>Honestly the thing that consistently surprises me is that requests hasn't been standardised and brought into the standard libraryInstead, official documentation seems comfortable with recommending a third party package: https://docs.python.org/3/library/urllib.request.html#module...
>The Requests package is recommended for a higher-level HTTP client interface.
Which was fine when requests were the de-facto-standard only player in town, but at some point modern problems (async, http2) required modern solutions (httpx) and thus ecosystem fragmentation began.
by localuser13
3/25/2026 at 10:05:21 AM
Well, the reason for all the fragmentation is because the Python stdlib doesn't have the core building blocks for an async http or http2 client in the way requests could build on urllib.The h11, h2, httpcore stack is probably the closest thing to what the Python stdlib should look like to end the fragmentation but it would be a huge undertaking for the core devs.
by Spivak
3/25/2026 at 9:51:20 AM
Node now supports the Fetch API.by Kwpolska
3/25/2026 at 10:23:48 AM
What's wrong with Go's? I've never had any issues with it. Go has some of the best http batteries included of any languageby umvi