In most cases, avoid def main() in Python — It’s not Java or C++
A pattern that keeps appearing in Python scripts, tutorials, and AI-generated code: This is cargo-culted from C and Java, where a main() function is a syntactic requirement. Python has no such rule. The above is functionally identical to: When def main() actually makes sense There is one legitimate use case: when you need a named entry point for Python packaging. If your pyproject.toml defines a console script, it must reference a callable: Here, def main() earns its place. But this is a specific packaging concern — not a general…