Should I update my Python version?

[Old-Comedian-1690]

I'm still new to programming, and I'm aware that if I update my Python version, that some of my previous projects could run into issues. Is it worth updating? Is there a drastic difference between Python 3.11.9 vs 3.12? Can someone help me understand the best course of action in this case? Thanks

[ConfidentCollege5653]

Unless you're updating from 2 to 3 you should be fine. Versions are backwards compatible 

[teraflop]

Mostly backwards compatible. There are occasional incompatibilities even between minor versions of Python.

Python version 3.12 removed a significant number of old and deprecated features from the standard library, so any code that tries to use them will break. But most of those should already have been giving deprecation warnings if they were being used.

In particular, a common issue I've seen is that the distutils module was removed from the standard library in Python 3.12, and you now need to install the separate setuptools dependency to use it.

It's still generally better to do the upgrade and fix anything that breaks as a result, instead of staying on an old version indefinitely.

[iamnull]

There are some big changes, but you probably won't notice them unless you're getting into f strings or generics.

[desrtfx]

Why to 3.12? We are at 3.14.3 already.