namedtuple brings in likely inappropriate complexity, so it is not always simpler.

Consider the object returned by os.stat. It allows getting terms by index:

  >>> import os
  >>> os.stat("/dev/null")
  os.stat_result(st_mode=8630, st_ino=336, st_dev=-2065165533, st_nlink=1,
  st_uid=0, st_gid=0, st_size=0, st_atime=1730960121, st_mtime=1730981460,
  st_ctime=1730981460)
  >>> os.stat("/dev/null")[0]
  8630
  >>> os.stat("/dev/null")[-1]
  1730981720

But that list of 10 values became locked because people do:

  (mode, ino, dev, nlink, uid, gid, size, atime, mtime, ctime) = o.stat(filename)

Which means new fields are not accessible by indexing, only attribute lookup:

  >>> os.stat("/dev/null").st_blksize
  65536

Assuming there wasn't the historical baggage which made os.stat the way it is, why would namedtuple still be the more Pythonic solution, and simpler than a frozen dataclass?

(Historically, os.stat originally returned a tuple, then migrated to os.stat_result and named attributes, both for readability and to allow new fields, but keeping indexing for backwards compatibility support.)