The stdlib datetime module is in more of a sorry state than certain third party libraries and is full of footguns, as you, a read-the-docs-and-changelogs-carefully person, can surely tell from the myriad deprecations and warnings added over the years, not to mention the confusing params like tz and tzinfo. Heavily tested doesn’t mean shit when the semantics of the API is fundamentally flawed and can’t be updated.

> Taking on a dependency does not relieve you of reading docs, but it also adds a further burden as you now need to trust the code. The stdlib is much more heavily tested and documented than any 3rd party library will be.

Sure, but the opposite applies as well. Sticking with the flawed stdlib means you are trusting that every single future developer is as careful in reading all the docs as you are - even when it's someone reviewing that random trivial-looking patch which is secretly hiding a massive footgun. A junior developer submitted a five-line patch touching datetime? Better schedule several hours for a proper analysis!

Or you can write your own wrapper code, of course. Which will almost certainly have worse documentation and testing than a popular third-party library.

External libraries aren't evil. When chosen properly, they relieve you of burdens. You shouldn't grab any random "leftpad"-like dependency like they are going out of fashion, but something as complicated as timezone handling is best left to code written by domain experts - which means using a library.

> The stdlib is much more heavily tested and documented than any 3rd party library will be.

You initially said you write your own code instead of using libraries, I replied to that, and now it's that you use the stdlib instead of libraries. I won't argue against shifting goalposts.

Did OP blindly install the package?

Or do it with sight?

> People can't even be bothered to read docs but will just blindly install a package just because someone was able to package it and upload it to PyPI.

That's a straw man argument. No one said "blindly". You can very well carefully consider the pros and cons of adding a dependency and arrive at the conclusion that it makes sense. Many PyPI packages are in the Debian stable repositories, you could use that as an additional barrier as well.