[Python-Dev] Status regarding Old vs. Advanced String Formating (original) (raw)

Steven D'Aprano steve at pearwood.info
Sat Feb 25 10:41:51 CET 2012

Tshepang Lekhonkhobe wrote:

On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 05:10, Ned Batchelder <ned at nedbatchelder.com> wrote:

Has Python ever removed a feature except in X.0 releases? I thought this happens all the time, but with deprecations first. Is that not the case?

Hardly "all the time". Only when absolutely necessary, the exception being the 2.x -> 3.x transition which was designed to break backwards compatibility for the sake of "cleaning up" the language. And even there, the changes were very conservative.

If there is every going to be a similar 3.x -> 4.x transition, and there may not be, it will probably be 10 years away.

Python is a lot more mature now, and consequently the costs of breaking backwards compatibility is much greater, particularly when it comes to language features like % rather than modules. After all, it is easy for Python users to take a copy of a depreciated module and keep using it, but it's very difficult for them to fork Python if a language feature is removed.

-- Steven

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