PEP-594 is actually causing me some anxiety - I deal with a good amount of code that uses some of those “batteries to be removed”.

Some of them (telnetlib) I can vendor in, but I wonder how many people who use them will be caught pantsless?

I reckon if you're the sort of org who will update the Python version you use, you're going to be switched on enough to handle this somehow. I don't use any of these "dead" batteries though, so I can't speak with any authority on the matter

Are you saying there will never be a Python 4, or are you saying that the 2->3 transition was so badly flubbed nobody will make that mistake again?

Well yeah given that some people are still talking about issues from a software release that happened 15 years ago, it would be incredibly unlikely that they'd want to repeat that.

What has me a little bit confused is that we're in a thread talking about how Python somehow "flubbed" after 2->3, despite an explosion in popularity during that period culminating in it being arguably the most popular programming language around. And the counterexample is supposed to be Perl, a language which I have enjoyed using but which has fallen off a cliff during the same period, and which has had an even more enormous and self-defeating flub (Perl 6 aka "Raku").

As I said, I understand if Python 3.x was painful for some organizations. I think the suggestion that it was a failure and that Perl showed us the right way to go is a pretty silly one though.

Saying that the Raku Programming Language is a flub, indicates to me that you do not know it at all. Getting Unicode support right by itself should be an indication that it is better than Python 3 in that respect. And let's not start about the fact that the Raku Programming Language does not have a GIL, allowing true multi-processing features and event handling.

https://raku.org

In terms of execution the development and release of Perl 6 was undeniably a flub. What eventually got released was ultimately a fine language, but it was years late, largely incompatible with existing Perl code (hence the rename) and a sizeable portion of what was left of the Perl community didn't adopt it and stayed on Perl 5.x. Sizeable enough that there are now some rumblings around tidying 5.x up a bit and releasing it as Perl 7.