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

[Antoine Pietri]

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