Why Python 4.0 won't be like Python 3.0

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 12:51 AM, Grant Edwards <invalid at invalid.invalid> wrote:
> I agree with the comments that the appellation for "simply the next
> version after 3.9" should be 3.10 and not 4.0.  Everybody I know
> considers SW versions numbers to be dot-separated tuples, not
> floating point numbers.
>

Agreed. However, by the time 3.9 comes out, there'll have been all
those years of changes. "The version after 3.9" would be a good time
to remove stuff that's been deprecated since 3.3 or 3.6 or whatever;
technically, that's breaking backward compat (hence 4.0 rather than
3.10), but in effect, it's no more breakage than a minor release would
give you (since you should have stopped using deprecated APIs several
versions ago). So there's still value in going to 4.0 around about ten
versions after 3.0; but it doesn't necessarily have to happen exactly
then.

ChrisA