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Actually, as web developers, we also value startup time when in development mode, specially when we are in "hot reload" mode (when the app restarts automatically each time we save a development file).

In my mid-sized projects (\~10 kE LOC, \~150 pip dependencies) it takes between 5 and 10s. This is probably the upper limit to "stay in flow".

Same for unit tests.

There is this famous Gary Bernhardt talk \[https://youtu.be/RAxiiRPHS9k?t=12m \] he argues that a whole unit test suite should be able to run in < 1s and actually show examples where the developer is able to run hundreds of tests in less that 1s.

Note: In my projects, it take 3-4 seconds just to collect them (using pytest --collect-only), but I suspect Python's startup time is only responsible for a small part of this delay. Still, this is an important point to keep in mind.

S.