[6thaccount2]

I don't think this is remotely true. Compare doing file parsing in Python, Perl, C#, Java, Common Lisp, OCaml, Ada, Fortran, C++...etc.

Doing it in Python is easy...it is a bigger pain in several of the other ones. Even your Clojure examples are definitely more work than in Python. You even defined a helper function (something I've never needed to do in Python) as the default is so easy. Mind you, the Clojure isn't too bad and definitely better than some of the others I've mentioned.

To your average developer...this is indeed probably irrelevant as IO might be a small part of your codebase. I do a lot of process automation though and do a lot of IO.