> I actually from a less technical person's perspective, "cute" error messages humanize errors, showing them that there was indeed someone who made that page they are currently on and not just some soulless computer and thus making solving the problem much more approachable!

Yeah, I don't have any problem with "cute" error messages as long as they also contain all the info someone would need to identify the problem and if possible solve it. it's not the "cute" that's the problem really, it's the frustration and the lack of direction that usually comes with them.

In the python shell, `exit` is a string containing a message to the effect of "You can leave the shell by sending EOF (CTRL-D)".

I've seen HN commenters express extreme outrage over this ("They obviously know what you want to do, so why not just do it?!?!?"), but I love it. The first time I got that message, I considered it incredibly helpful, because sending EOF will work on any tool that reads from standard input, not just python. I hadn't known how to do that before the python shell taught me!

Consider that there is zero reason not to print that line, and exit anyway.

That's quite far from the truth. That's like saying that, if you read a textbook, there is zero reason to do any of the exercises.

And from the implementation perspective, the python shell is trying to run a simple loop:

1. Read a line of python code.

2. Evaluate the code.

3. Print the result.

Defining `exit` as the name of a string slots into that loop seamlessly. Defining it as a special keyword that is recognized by the shell, despite the fact that it has no special meaning to python, means you're no longer just reading python code; now you have to implement a separate parser solely for the purpose of handling this command.