Release Date: Oct. 25, 2022

This is an early developer preview of Python 3.12

Major new features of the 3.12 series, compared to 3.11

Python 3.12 is still in development. This release, 3.12.0a1 is the first of seven 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 (2023-05-08) and, if necessary, may be modified or deleted up until the release candidate phase (2023-07-31). Please keep in mind that this is a preview release and its use is not recommended for production environments.

Many new features for Python 3.12 are still being planned and written. Among the new major new features and changes so far:

• The deprecated wstr and wstr_length members of the C implementation of unicode objects were removed, per PEP 623.

• In the unittest module, a number of long deprecated methods and classes were removed. (They had been deprecated since Python 3.1 or 3.2).

• The deprecated smtpd module has been removed.

• A number of other old, broken and deprecated functions, classes and methods have been removed.

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

The next pre-release of Python 3.12 will be 3.12.0a2, currently scheduled for 2022-11-14.

More resources

• Online Documentation
• PEP 693, 3.12 Release Schedule
• Report bugs at https://github.com/python/cpython/issues.
• Help fund Python and its community.

And now for something completely different

This is Not the Poem that I Had Hoped to Write

This is not the poem that I had hoped to write
when I sat at my desk and the page was white.
You see, there were other words that I’d had in mind,
yet this is what I leave behind.

I thought it was a poem to eradicate war;
one of such power, it would heal all the sores
of a world torn apart by conflict and schism.
But it isn’t.

Lovers, I’d imagined, would quote from it daily,
Mothers would sing it to soothe crying babies.
And whole generations would be given new hope.
Nope.

I had grand aspirations. Believe me, I tried.
Humanity examined with lessons applied.
But the right words escaped me; so often they do.
Have these in lieu.

Brian Bilston