Learning Python, 6th Edition

Chapter 41. All Good Things

Welcome to the end of the book! Now that you’ve made it this far, this chapter says a few words in closing about Python’s evolution before turning you loose on the software field and then wraps up with a bit of fun.

You’ve now had a chance to see the entire Python language yourself—including some advanced features that may seem at odds with a scripting language meant to be accessible to nonprofessionals. Though many users will understandably accept this as status quo, in an open source project, it’s crucial that some ask the “why” questions too. Ultimately, the trajectory of the Python story—and its true conclusion—is at least in part up to you.

Toward that end, this chapter begins by calling out what may be one of Python’s biggest downsides: its rate of change. This topic is unavoidably subjective, and you should weigh its coverage here on whatever scale you bring to the table.

The Python Tsunami

Twelve years ago, this book warned that Python was growing too convoluted and bloated—and then Python grew a lot more convoluted and bloated. Clearly, this message has not reached those behind the convoluting and bloating.

Even so, this stuff still matters. To parrot the Preface, the last dozen years have hosted the rise of f-string literals, named-assignment expressions, match statements, type hinting, async coroutines, dictionary union, star-unpacking proliferation, underscore digit separators, module attribute hooks, exception groups, dictionary-key insertion ...