[Python-ideas] Backward-incompatible changes for Python 4

[Anders Hovmöller]

Please let's all agree that April 1 is the worst day of the year. 

> On 1 Apr 2019, at 16:27, Antoine Pietri <antoine.pietri1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> While the switch to Python 3 did an excellent job in removing some of
> the old inconsistencies we had in the language, pretty much everyone
> agrees that some other backwards-incompatible changes could be made to
> remove some old warts and bring even more consistency to Python.
> 
> Since Python 4 is getting closer and closer, I think it’s time to
> finally discuss some of the most obvious changes we should do for
> Python 4. Here is the list I compiled:
> 
> - The / operator returns floats, which loses information when both of
> the operands are integer. In Python 4, “1 / 2” should return a
> decimal.Decimal. To ease the transition, we propose to add a new “from
> __future__ import decimal_division” in Python 3.9 to enable this
> behavior.
> - As most of the Python ecosystem is moving towards async, some of the
> old I/O-blocking APIs should be progressively migrated to an async by
> default model. The most obvious candidate to start this transition is
> the print function, which blocks on the I/O of flushes. We propose to
> make “print” an async coroutine. In Python 3.9, this feature could be
> optionally enabled with “from __future__ import print_coroutine”.
> - To ease compatibility with the Windows API, the PyUnicode* objects
> should be internally represented as an array of uint16_t, as it would
> avoid the conversion overhead from UCS. CPython migration details are
> left as an exercise for the developer.
> 
> We think more changes are obviously warranted (e.g adding a new string
> formatting module, changing the semantic of the import system, using
> := in with statements...), but these changes will need specific
> threads of their own.
> 
> So, can you think of other backward-incompatible changes that should
> be done in Python 4? Don't hesitate to add your own ideas :-)
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -- 
> Antoine Pietri
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