On Tue, Sep 28, 2021 at 12:40 AM Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org> wrote:
What I have heard repeatedly, from people who are paid to know, is that most users don’t care about the latest features, and would rather stick to a release until it becomes unsupported. (Extreme example: Python 2.)
Numpy isn’t random, it’s at the bottom of the food chain for a large ecosystem or two — if it doesn’t support a new Python release, none of its dependent packages can even start porting. (I guess only Cython is even lower, but it’s a build-time tool. And indeed it has supported 3.10 for a long time.)
Well, no, it wasn't entirely random :-). Being on the bottom of the food chain is important, but I don't think it's the full story -- Tensorflow is also at the bottom of a huge ecosystem. I think it's also related to NumPy being mostly volunteer-run, which means they're sensitive to feedback from individual enthusiasts, and enthusiasts are the most aggressive early adopters. OTOH Tensorflow is a huge commercial collaboration, and companies *hate* upgrading. Either way though, it doesn't seem to be anything to do with CPython's ABI stability or release cadence. -n -- Nathaniel J. Smith -- https://vorpus.org