Python 3.8.0a4

Release Date: May 6, 2019

This is an early developer preview of Python 3.8

Major new features of the 3.8 series, compared to 3.7

Python 3.8 is still in development. This release, 3.8.0a4 is the last of four planned alpha releases. Alpha releases are intended to make it easier to test the current state of new features and bug fixes and to test the release process. During the alpha phase, features may be added up until the start of the beta phase (2019-05-31) and, if necessary, may be modified or deleted up until the release candidate (2019-09-29) . Please keep in mind that this is a preview release and its use is not recommended for production environments.

Many new features for Python 3.8 are still being planned and written. Among the new major new features and changes so far:

PEP 572, Assignment expressions

PEP 570, Positional-only arguments

BPO 35766, typed_ast is merged back to CPython

BPO 35813, multiprocessing can now use shared memory segments to avoid pickling costs between processes

(Hey, fellow core developer, if a feature you find important is missing from this list, let Łukasz know.)

The next pre-release of Python 3.8 will be 3.8.0b1, currently scheduled for 2019-05-31.

More resources

And now for something completely different

Kilimanjaro is a pretty tricky climb you know, most of it's up until you reach the very very top, and then it tends to slope away rather sharply.

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