How uv got so fast¹. I haven’t followed the Python ecosystem for maybe five years. But I know uv has taken off. I have it on my Mac, and it’s my go-to when I occasionally want to play with Python. It feels like pnpm or Cargo — fast and modern.

I assumed Rust was the main reason uv is so fast. Turns out, that’s actually the least important factor. Years of PEP standards made uv possible in the first place. Intentionally limited compatibility with pip, plus smart language-agnostic optimizations, did most of the heavy lifting. It’s the design choices, not the language choice, that really matter.