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Comment by baq

3 days ago

Python needed a breaking change for Unicode and a breaking change for exceptions and took it ages ago for a better future today - and it's still remembered as a huge PITA by everyone. I think you'll find everyone in the Python community disagreeing with you about a not-backwards-compatible Python 4.

If Python actually incremented the major version every time they broke backwards compatibility, we'd be on something like Python 36 by now.

Almost every version they break existing code. This is why it's common for apps written in Python to depend on specific Python versions instead of just "anything above 3.x".

Every minor release of Python is a breaking change. They deprecate stuff all the time, and remember the stdlib and the wider ecosystem has to also move in concert so the breaking changes cascade.

By major version I meant minor version, 3.13 -> 3.14 is a minor version in Python, but a major source of breaking changes, that is what I meant. There will be no Python 4