eval(/exec) is how dataclasses (and namedtuples before them) work: https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/4c1b6a6f4fc46add0097e... . It is a big gun, but sometimes (usually deep within lib code) big guns are the right answer. Don't use reflection or runtime bytecode emission in Java.. unless you have to. Don't drop to inline asm in C.. unless you have to. And so on.

And, of course, if it _is_ the right decision to use such a tool be aware of just how easy it is to use big guns wrong. Even this very article's 'just do it' tone seems to convey a lack of respect for decorators, what I'd consider a 'medium gun' in python. So many intermediate python programmers write decorators that don't properly interoperate with the descriptor protocol and thus either fail to work on instancemethods (as here: https://repl.it/repls/ThreadbareCurlyKeyboard ) or hardcode a 'self' arg in their wrapper and thus don't work on global functions. I'm fine with simplifying it for an article but for production code this is a pet peeve of mine :p