That's fine, because this is still a genuine problem in need of a solution. It's not just about startup time for the sake of it (not that this is even a superficial concern - python startup time with large dependencies quickly gets awful). Large projects can have hefty dependencies that not every user will use. And bundling it all for everyone can sometimes be intractable. The work arounds people use already have the sort of problems you're talking about, on top of being diabolical and hacky. Not having to duplicate and hide imports in functions alone would be a big improvement. It's not like it isn't being proposed as an optional language feature.