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Re:What’s in Which Python by reuven on Monday May 23, 2022 @12:35AM (#31475381)
There are very, very few breaking changes within Python 3. If you're an individual user, then upgrading to the latest version is almost certainly a good idea.

But there are lots of companies that release software using Python. To ensure a stable production environment, they upgrade more slowly, or on a schedule that's distinct from the Python release cycle.

Also, companies often don't just let people upgrade things themselves. The IT department schedules a company-wide Python upgrade, for example, testing the effects beforehand. I have several training clients still using 3.7 and 3.8, not because things would break with 3.10, but because they haven't fully vetted the newest version, and they're being super conservative.

I do wonder if companies will be a bit faster to upgrade over the coming years, given that execution speed is expected to improve rather dramatically. Upgrading won't be a matter of some nice-to-have features, but rather of real savings in system usage.

Re:What’s in Which Python by smitty1e on Monday May 23, 2022 @07:36AM (#31477709)
> There are very, very few breaking changes within Python 3.

But will structural pattern matching be back-ported, though?

Certainly an incompatibility, if not a breaking change per se.

Re:What’s in Which Python by kdmccormick on Monday May 23, 2022 @08:04AM (#31477941)
GP means there are very few backwards-incompatible changes in new releases. There are plenty of forwards-incompatible ones, though.
Re:What’s in Which Python by fnord123 on Monday May 23, 2022 @09:54AM (#31479074)
How is pattern matching a breaking change? If your code doesn't have it how would it break?
Re:What’s in Which Python by nedbat on Monday May 23, 2022 @02:22PM (#31483003)
Some people might mistakenly assume that "match" and "case" are now hard keywords, which would of course break lots of code.

But they are soft keywords, so there's no issue.