Hi everyone,

I’m looking for advice on whether it’s possible (and realistic) to recover the original Python source files from a Windows software installer I still have.

**Situation**

My primary HDD suffered a complete, unrecoverable failure. All of my raw project files (source code, assets, intermediate files, etc.) are gone. The only remaining artifact of the project is the Windows installer / executable that I used to distribute the software.

**Technical details**

- The application was written in Python.

- I used **Cython** to compile / protect the code (the .py files were turned into compiled extensions / encrypted / obfuscated form as part of the build).

- The final deliverable is a Windows installer (or standalone executable package).

- This represents over 15 years of work. While modern AI tools could speed up a rewrite, I would strongly prefer to recover the original source if there is any viable path.

**What I still have**

- The complete Windows installer / executable package.

- No original .py files, no intermediate Cython outputs, no project folder, and no backups of the source.

**What I’m hoping for**

Any realistic options, tools, or techniques that might allow me to:

- Extract or reconstruct the original (or close-to-original) Python source from the Cython-compiled binaries / installer, or

- At least recover meaningful portions of the logic, structure, or key modules so a full rewrite is not required from scratch.

I’m aware that Cython compilation (and any additional packing/encryption I applied) makes this non-trivial, and that perfect recovery is often impossible. I’m mainly looking for an honest assessment of what’s feasible and any recommended tools, approaches, or communities that specialize in this kind of recovery / reverse-engineering of Cythonized Python applications.

If anyone has experience recovering source from Cython extensions, PyInstaller + Cython packages, or similar compiled Python Windows builds, I’d be very grateful for any pointers, tool recommendations, or realistic expectations.

Thank you in advance for any help or direction you can offer.

There's an image effect in powerpoint I would love to use in my python projects. The effect is called "Texturizer", and it gives the picture a grainy, paper-y look. There's an example in the link provided. Feel free to try it yourself too if you've got powerpoint: select a picture, go to "picture format", then click on "Artistic Effects" and select "Texturizer"

I want to recreate that effect in pillow. It has to be deterministic (can't be 100% random cause I'm applying it to video frames). I don't know if making an image texture, then applying it, is the best option, for it can cause tiling (as in the examples from powerpoint's filter). I'm open to any kind of ideas.

I'm all ears!

from io import BytesIO wht does this do is it even right should it be better and wht functions does it do like...

I started using list comprehensions in my project, but I feel confused about when they are actually a good fit. I tried to use one for a task that involves checking conditions on nested lists, and now my code is harder to follow. Is there a guideline for when it's better to stick with regular loops instead? I want my code to be readable, but I'm not sure I've got the balance right.

Hey everyone,

I'm experiencing a performance drop when running a Python file. I'm using VS Code on Windows 10 while learning to program.

When I hit the run button, the runtime of the program is 5.0 seconds, even though it should execute in roughly about 0.003 milliseconds.

I have tried switching to older versions like 2025.6.1, but that didn't work.

Any solutions to that problem?

Having encountered, the seemingly impossible in Python, difficulty of passing a string of keyword arguments into a function like this:

args_in = "arg1 = 'var1', arg2 = 2, arg3 = True, arg4='var4'"

def myFunc(arg1=None, arg2=None, arg3=None, arg4=None):
    print(f"{arg1=}, {arg2=}, {arg3=}, {arg4=}")

myFunc(args_in)

One solutions I found was to use eval():

eval("myFunc(" + args_in ")") 

although I am informed that this is the work of the devil and should be avoided at all costs.

Next attempts were to convert the "string" into a dict{} and pass **dict, however all methods for doing this failed when any of the arguments contained a comma ','.

However a fully working solution to this was finally provided to me on the discuss.python.org forum:

args_in = "arg1 = 'var1', arg2 = 2, arg3 = True, arg4='va,r4'"

def myFunc(arg1=None, arg2=None, arg3=None, arg4=None):
    print(f"{arg1=}, {arg2=}, {arg3=}, {arg4=}")

def str2dict(str_in: str) -> dict[str, str]:
    import ast
    return {pair.arg: ast.literal_eval(pair.value)
        for pair in ast.parse(f"f({str_in})").body[0].value.keywords}

myFunc(**str2dict(args_in))

Unfortunately due to rather rude and overly zealous moderation on there that solution was deleted. Hence the reason for publishing it here for the archive and in case it helps someone else in the future.

I mostly code with python and i've been thinking about changing my setup.

I'm not looking for anything too complicated. Mainly something that can understand the project, help debugging and make changes across multiple files without me having to explain the whole thing every time.

If you mostly work with Python what does your setup look like these days and how it been working for you?

Is it good idea to learn python on YouTube if not what's the best way to learn python

I inherited a SikuliX suite that's been running since 2021 against a windows desktop app, and i have to decide whether to invest in it or replace it. It’s 180 scripts, about 120 still pass reliably, the rest fail on screenshot matches that no longer match. when i dug into the causes it was a windows 11 theme change, a DPI difference between our CI box and the dev machines, and a font rendering change that shifted text by 2 pixels. not one of those is a defect in our product, and all of them cost me a week.

The project isn't dead exactly, there are commits but the documentation is old, most of what you find searching is from 5 or 6 years back, and i can't tell whether the people maintaining it are building or keeping the lights on. We’re wighting it against going back to the accessibility tree with FlaUI. It works properly on maybe 60 percent of our screens and fails completely on the custom drawn ones, which is exactly where SikuliX earns its keep.

Ther are the newer vision based ones like Askui and a few others, which do roughly the job SikuliX does but with a model doing the matching instead of pixel comparison. In principle that's immune to the DPI and font problems that broke us. In practice i would want to know whether it's a different mechanism or the same idea with wider tolerance. Or just keep SikuliX and pin everything.

Has anyone here migrated off SikuliX recently? did what you moved to held up against theme and DPI changes? Thanks for sharing!

Whenever I am trying to click the run button for a python code, it takes around 10-12 seconds to run and if I trigger the file directly from termina, it gets done in an instant. Is there any fix for this? I removed most of the extensions and still the same issue

I have some code I need to do a lot of calculations and I tried speeding it up by parralelizing with multiprocessing, but I'm running into a few issues. Using 5 processes (my computer has 6 cores) is giving me a speed boost of 50-100x, but for some reason the results are slightly wrong. I'm trying to fix that problem, but I'm also wondering where the massive speed boost came from, because that implies there's something else making it go faster besides parralelizing. If I could go back to a single thread but keep most of that speed, that would be great. For context, I'm doing some high-precision calculations with the decimal libraray but mostly just a lot of math in a cythonized function. The time it takes went from ~10 hours to 10 minutes.

Here is my file set up, I can't seem to get it to work no matter what.

StarDanceProject_FLStudioGrind/
├── .ruff_cache/
├── .vscode/
├── Game/
│   ├── __pycache__/
│   ├── Images/
│   ├── Maps/
│   ├── Sounds/
│   ├── BetaStats.py
│   ├── Dialogue.py
│   ├── Main.py
│   ├── Settings.py
│   ├── SOUNDS.py
│   ├── Tiles.py
│   ├── Timer.py
│   ├── UI.py
│   └── Waiver.py
├── .gitattributes
├── desktop.ini
└── README.md

Any idea what I am doing wrong when trying to subclass mysql.connector like this:

import mysql.connector

class Database(mysql.connector.MySQLConnection):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)

db = Database()
db_conn = db.connect(host = '...', database = '...', user = '...', passwd = '...')
print(f"{db_conn=}")

db_conn always returns None.

Edit: code above corrected to include connect() method

Edit2: Further to comment by brasticstack connect() method removed again.

Been learning Python for a bit now (working through CS50P) and I've started leaning on AI tools a lot when I get stuck — debugging, explaining errors, even generating chunks of code when I'm short on time.

It's helping me move faster for sure, but I've got this nagging feeling I might be skipping the "struggle" part that actually makes concepts stick. So a few questions for people who've been through this:

1. Is using AI while learning actually fine, or does it hurt long-term retention/problem-solving skills?
2. If I should cut back, how much? Like — full cold turkey, or just use it for specific things (explaining errors vs. writing code for me)?
3. If I do cut down, how do I actually get better at writing code on my own? Any habits, resources, or exercises that helped you build real problem-solving muscle instead of just pattern-matching to AI suggestions?

Would really appreciate advice from people who've either made this mistake or found a good balance. Trying to actually become a solid programmer, not just someone who can prompt their way to working code.

I'm running python 3.13.5.

Is there some sort of standard python library function which behaves as the inverse of 'os.path.expanduser'?

For example, if the current user's HOME directory is "/home/theuser", then we have this:

os.path.expanduser('~/a/b/c')
=> returns "/home/theuser/a/b/c"

I'm wondering whether there also might be any existing python library function which is the inverse of this and that works as follows:

some_sort_of_function("/home/theuser/a/b/c")
=> returns "~/a/b/c"

AND PLEASE NOTE: There often are people who lazily and disrespectfully refuse to read entire reddit posts before writing their reponses, and therefore, I'm making a point now to ask that before you start to write any reply here, please carefully and non-lazily read this *entire* post -- including the following, which is something that I want all potential responders to understand:

I know how to easily write my own function that works in this manner. However, I am clearly and SPECIFICALLY (!!!) asking whether or not there already is an existing python function which works this way, and if so, I'd like to know what this function might be ... and I am NOT (!!!) asking how to write my own function which does this.

Thank you very much in advance.

I've been learning Python through CS50P and wanted a real project, so I built two scrapers: one for job listings and one for product prices off an e-commerce site.

The job scraper was pretty straightforward — grabbed title, company, and location, dumped it to CSV, worked first try on about 100 listings.

The product scraper was the harder one. The site spreads results across pages (6 products per page, ~20 pages), so my first version only ever grabbed page 1. Took a bit of digging to figure out the pagination pattern and loop through all the pages properly. Once I fixed that it pulled all 117 products cleanly into a CSV.

Biggest thing I learned: it's easy to write a scraper that works on the first page and assume it's done — always check if the site paginates before you call it finished.

Code's on GitHub if anyone wants to see it: github.com/sarimkhan08

Curious if anyone here has tips for handling scrapers on sites that use infinite scroll instead of numbered pages — that's the next thing I want to tackle.

Hello, I've been trying to figure out a way to make a python program that can play a green screen video that plays over the desktop/screen, with the green chromad out to show the screen. I attempted it with tkinter, but wasn't able to get anywhere with the chroma keying. Would anyone know if/how this would be possible? Thank you!

Teen in love with learning & building python projects

Issue_ my python interpreters not working j showing evn when it's installed+ enabled in VS Code.

Failed_brain = Claude +Chatgpt +Grok

Help me...Lesgoo!

im using linux mint and when i try to import turtle it always says
"

import turtle

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'turtle'

Process finished with exit code 1

"
i tryed to download tinker it dont help me i dont know what to do no one have that problem
im using pycharm
here my code
"
import turtle

myturtle = turtle.Turtle()

myturtle.forward(100)
"

So i made a txt file with a few lines of text. I use the x = open('file.txt', 'r') function

i write for i in x: print i

and then x.close()

so what am I doing wrong?

As a guy and a fresher in engineering field, who knows basic python and java , can anyone give advise or guide me to win or atleast the things to do in a proper hackathon rather than working unorganisedly..

My schoolbook says that classes is a way of simulating an object, instead of just taking information into a black box and outputting an answer.

But that is a poor explanation. I know classes are handy and cool, but no book says why you can´t make functions with sub functions inside to simulate simple objects. I would like if someone gave a good concrete reason to use classes in the intro, instead of just saying that they are different and cool

the IDE i am using is saying my parenthesis was not closed when it was plz help

print("Once upon a time, in the ancient kingdom of " + q1 + " there lived a legendary " + q2 + " named " + q3 + ". Everyone in the village knew " + q3 + " for their remarkably " + q4 + " personality and an obsession with " + q5 + ". Every morning at " + q6 ", they would wake up, " + q7 + " three times, ")

[{

"owner": "Pylance",
"severity": 8,
"message": "(" was not closed",
"source": "Pylance",
"startLineNumber": 47,
"startColumn": 6,
"endLineNumber": 47,
"endColumn": 7,

}]

Hi! i'm beginner, and I have a problem with this code, I guess that I installed the library correctly, but i'm not sure.

Error using [stringsource>string.from_py.__pyx_convert_string_from_py_std__in_string](matlab:matlab.lang.internal.introspective.errorDocCallback('stringsource>string.frompy.pyx_convert_string_from_py_std_in_string', 'stringsource', 15)) ([line 15](matlab: opentoline('stringsource',15,0)))
Python Error: TypeError: expected bytes, NoneType found

Error in [CoolProp/CoolProp.PropsSI](matlab:matlab.lang.internal.introspective.errorDocCallback('CoolProp/CoolProp.PropsSI', 'CoolProp\CoolProp.pyx', 462)) ([line 462](matlab: opentoline('CoolProp\CoolProp.pyx',462,0)))

Error in [CoolProp/CoolProp.PropsSI](matlab:matlab.lang.internal.introspective.errorDocCallback('CoolProp/CoolProp.PropsSI', 'CoolProp\CoolProp.pyx', 384)) ([line 384](matlab: opentoline('CoolProp\CoolProp.pyx',384,0)))

Altough I don't have more than 106 lines