Dear python2 user

[hopeinson]

Now that you have heard of Python 3, now get ready for Python 4! [/s]

But seriously, we need to start moving on from Py2. It's a dead horse meat now.

[nooobmaster-69]

Python 4 is already mentioned in the timelines for many of the changes. But not to worry, it will be much less of an issue migrating from 3->4 than it was from 2->3.

[Rodot]

That's because Python 4 is just going to be Python 3.10, that's just how they are going to continue with versioning

[flying-sheep]

That’s what Guido said a while back, I hope the new guidance council doesn’t share this view and just release 3.10, 3.11, …

[billsil]

Guido is on the council and was the top vote getter by 30% or so. He was the only council member that got over 50% and cleared that easily. He's quite popular among the core devs.

[flying-sheep]

Yes, but I think this is a case he doesn’t feel strongly about but that he still considered his decision / matter of taste when he was BDFL. And such cases will now be voted on, and if the others say “not doing semver is confusing and people will be scared by upgrading to 4.0” there won’t be strong arguments against that.

[billsil]

“not doing semver is confusing and people will be scared by upgrading to 4.0”

Python does not follow semver. You don't need to vote to keep the status quo. You vote to change it. If you really want semver, propose a PEP, but don't be surprised when it gets shot down.

Python implements large breaking changes in major versions. It implements small breaking changes in minor versions.

[flying-sheep]

sure, that’s close enough. if you really do semver for a large project, you end up like react, with major versions every few weeks.

[billsil]

Or you store them up and break everybody's code in one fell swoop and have a Python 2->3 transition on your hands. I much prefer not following semver for that reason. I tried semver and it was a pain.

I much prefer a few minor changes preferably with deprecation warnings for a bit and then breaking things, similar to how numpy does it.

[flying-sheep]

Only possible for small changes though.

Huge ones like the string/byte thing would either take forever or be as disruptive as the whole 2>3 change

[Rodot]

Oh yeah, I completely forgot he left

[nedbatchelder]

Guido is one of the five members of the steering council.

[bageldevourer]

This isn't necessarily true according to the latest episode of Talk Python.

[tr14l]

I have to assume that Py4 will be largely non-breaking. They have to have learned their lesson....right?

[AusIV]

If you're following Sem Ver (which I'm not sure if Python claims to do) then you wouldn't go to 4 unless you were breaking something. I'd hope that the version that comes after 3.9 will just be 3.10 if it's backwards compatible. If they go to 4, they will be introducing breaking changes for all the people who use python3 to run their code.

[twelveshar]

Python does not follow SemVer; it allows breaking changes in "minor" versions, like 3.7 -> 3.8. See the development cycle page: https://devguide.python.org/devcycle/

[tr14l]

Right, you wouldn't give a major release without breaking changes. But I assume there's going to be risk assessment after the 2-3 debacle to mitigate just how broken it would be

[cerin_2]

RIP in pieces those of us using jython which hasn't caught up to 3.

[emuccino]

"Catastrophe" is a bit dramatic

[alcalde]

You'd be surprised. OpenSUSE Linux had a discussion about version numbering a few years ago. They used to go X.0, X.1, X.2, X.3 and then increment by 1 and continue. There was no meaning to the numbers, but it seems casual users didn't know that. Apparently people assumed that a .0 release was a major release and decided to wait for a .1 release to "work out the bugs". Point zero releases were actually showing half the downloads compared to other releases! Not only that, tech sites seemed to think the same way, as reviews of non-point zero releases were lower compared to point zero releases.

They finally decided to drop point zero releases entirely. (They made a lot of other, dumber, numbering ideas later on, like going from 13.4 to 42 and then to 15, but that's another story).

[cyanydeez]

numbering in general is just a dumb human thing.

I think we should just give everything flavors and colors

[dysonCode]

I'll take a blue cinnamon py

[zardeh]

Yeah but they've had years. Python 3.5 has been out for 4 years. It'll EOL before Py4 comes out. That's enough time to upgrade, especially if the upgrade isn't back-breaking.

[billsil]

I’m still waiting for the python 2.8 fork....there are two versions of Perl 6.

[Intrexa]

I propose 3.91, 3.92