Have plans for Python 4 been resurrected?

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I just started noticing deprecation notices like the following in the official Python documentation:

Deprecated since version 3.3, will be removed in version 4.0.

I had been led to believe based on a number of public statements (such as this article with excerpts interview with Guido) that there would never be a Python 4, but now I'm starting to wonder if he (or the Python maintainers) may have recently had a change of mind. Or are these deprecation notices just a humorous way of saying "this feature will never be removed"? You never know with someone who names his language after a comedy team.

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1 Answers

People like to repeat that one sound bite, but Guido had more to say on the subject, like:

Van Rossum didn't rule out the possibility of Python 4.0 entirely, though suggested this would likely only happen in the event of major changes to compatibility with C. "I could imagine that at some point we are forced to abandon certain binary or API compatibility for C extensions… If there was a significant incompatibility with C extensions without changing the language itself and if we were to be able to get rid of the GIL [global interpreter lock]; if one or both of those events were to happen, we probably would be forced to call it 4.0 because of the compatibility issues at the C extension level," he said.

(source: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/programming-languages-why-python-4-0-will-probably-never-arrive-according-to-its-creator/ - which contains a link to a video with more, if you have the time)

So the upshot of it seems to be that there will never be a Python 4, unless the advantages of making backwards compatibility breaking changes are so great, they simply dwarf the massive downsides that have become so apparent from the 2-to-3 change.

Programmers and programming language designers are pragmatic people, generally speaking. If the benefit outweighs the cost, it will happen eventually. Nobody has anything to gain from religious zeal about design choices.

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