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Anthropic invests $1.5M in the Python Software Foundation

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Re: Anthropic invests $1.5M in the Python Software Foundation

#51

Post by embedding-shape »

shadowgovt wrote: post #36
embedding-shape wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people are using MyPy or an alternative typechecker, and the community frowns on those who aren’t. That's not like a widespread/by-default/de-facto standard across the ecosystem, by a wide margin. Browse popular/trending Python repositories and GitHub sometime and I guess you can see. Most of the AI stuff released is still basically using conda or pip for dependencies, more times than not, they don't even shar…

I think in the case of TS, it's more that JavaScript itself is notoriously trash (I'm not being subjective; see https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat ), and TypeScript helps paper over like 90% of the holes in JavaScript. Python typed or untyped feels like a taste / flexibility / prototyping tradeoff; TypeScript vs. JavaScript feels like "Do you want to get work done or do you want to wrap barbed wire around y…

Typed Python vs untyped Python is literally the same as TS vs JS, don't let others fool you into thinking somehow it's different.

> TypeScript helps paper over like 90% of the holes in JavaScript

Always kind of baffles me when people say this, how are you actually programming where 90% of the errors/bugs you have are related to types and other things TS addresses? I must be doing something very different when writing JS because while those things happen sometime (once or twice a year maybe?), 90% of the issues I have while programming are domain/logic bugs, and wouldn't be solved by TS in any way.

Re: Anthropic invests $1.5M in the Python Software Foundation

#52

Post by defraudbah »

hamandcheese wrote: post #48

I must be the only one in here who thinks $1.5M is a small sum compared to Anthropic's size and the amount of value they have gotten out of Python. Good press is cheaper than I thought.

that was my first thought too, $1.5M is peanuts for Anthropic, however $1.5M is better than nothing, so it worth some PR too. Good they do, I think we have to encourage companies to do it, shaming will not help.

Re: Anthropic invests $1.5M in the Python Software Foundation

#53

Post by ajross »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #37
neom wrote: post #31

Seems like a good time to throw out a reminder regarding "Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure" by Nadia Asparouhova. While she may have published it in 2016, it's still relevant today and speaks to the need for the private sector generally (looking at you VC firms) to support and understand the open source work, hours of unfunded labor, powering our societies. https://www.fordfoundat…

Big Tech should really be footing the bill here as well as large established VC firms.

To a large extent they do and always have. It's not as broad or fair as it should be[1], but for almost any economically important project all the major contributors and maintainers are on the payroll of one of the big tech interests or a foundation funded by them.

The hippies writing that software may not be compensated at the level you'd expect given the value they provide, but they'll never go hungry.

[1] LLVM and Linux get more cash than they can spend. GNU stuff is comparatively impoverished because everyone assumes they'd do it for free anyway. Stuff that ships on a Canonical desktop or RHEL default install gets lots of cash but community favorites like KDE need to make their own way, etc... Also just to be clear: node is filled with povertyware and you should be extremely careful what you grab from npm.

Re: Anthropic invests $1.5M in the Python Software Foundation

#55

Post by solumunus »

simianwords wrote: post #46
maleldil wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's not the argument here. Python type hints allow checking correctness statically, which is what matters for agents.

Yes then you might as well use some other language that uses types but also gets you performance. I agree the ecosystem is missing but hey we have LLMs now

Performance isn’t the only important metric. There are other pros to weigh. For many apps a language might be performant enough, and bring other pros that make it more appealing than more performant alternatives.

Re: Anthropic invests $1.5M in the Python Software Foundation

#56

Post by tomComb »

hamandcheese wrote: post #48

I must be the only one in here who thinks $1.5M is a small sum compared to Anthropic's size and the amount of value they have gotten out of Python. Good press is cheaper than I thought.

You are right, it is. But it would be a mistake for us to use this opportunity to attack them for it.

We should applaud their donation today, and at another time assess the meager contributions of many companies that should be shamed.

Re: Anthropic invests $1.5M in the Python Software Foundation

#57

Post by godelski »

surajrmal wrote: post #35
htrp wrote: post #13

Looking at you Deepmind and OpenAI

Google sponsors the python foundation as per this page: https://www.python.org/psf/sponsors/

Kinda crazy that the top level "Visionary Sponsor" is a donation level of $160k. There's also 0 sponsors at the $100k level. I was also surprised to see Netflix at $5k and Jane Street at $17k. Maybe they should give more but there's a lot of names absent and that says more

Re: Anthropic invests $1.5M in the Python Software Foundation

#58

Post by mcintyre1994 »

ssutch3 wrote: post #33
zoobab wrote: post #12

I did not know you could make donations with a string attached ("improve security")...

Yes, and at least the strings they attached are productive palatable unlike some other organizations: https://pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-funding-statement.h...

That link shows the significance of this Anthropic donation too:

> $1.5 million over two years would have been quite a lot of money for us, and easily the largest grant we’d ever received.

Re: Anthropic invests $1.5M in the Python Software Foundation

#59

Post by minimaxir »

desireco42 wrote: post #20
simianwords wrote: post #2

Just recently I heard that typed languages are best for agentic programming

Why is this getting downvoted... it is true. Also it is true that dynamic languages (like Ruby ;) and Python) are more efficient with tokens, like significantly then types like C, C++ or such. But Javascript and Typescript are using twice the tokens of Ruby for example and Clojure is even more efficient, obviosly I would add.

It's not incorrect, but in the context of the given Hacker News submission it reads as "why fund Python at all?"
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