Real Python: Python News: What's New From April 2024

In April 2024, Python’s core development team released versions 3.13.0a6 and 3.12.3 of the language! The former received several exciting features, improvements, and optimizations, while the latter got more than 300 commits for security improvements and bug fixes.

The 3.13.0a6 release is the last alpha release. In the first half of May, the code will be frozen and won’t accept new features. Note that 3.13.0a6 is a pre-release, so you shouldn’t use it for production environments. However, it provides a great way to try out some new and exciting language features.

There is also great news about PyCon US 2024, which opened its call for volunteers.

Let’s dive into the most exciting Python news from April 2024!

Python 3.13.0 Alpha 6 and 3.12.3 Arrive

This April, Python released its sixth alpha preview release, 3.13.0a6. This version is the last alpha release, as Python 3.13 will enter the beta phase on May 7. Once in beta, it won’t accept any new features.

Python 3.13 brings the following new features:

• Colorized exception tracebacks are now the default behavior in the interactive interpreter or REPL.
• An experimental JIT compiler that provides the groundwork for significant performance improvements.
• The garbage collector is now incremental, which should make the garbage collection process more efficient.
• Stripped indentation in docstrings reduces memory usage and the size of .pyc files.

Meanwhile, the standard library comes with these new features:

• The dbm module has a new dbm.sqlite3 backend for creating new files.
• PEP 594 scheduled removals of many deprecated modules: aifc, audioop, chunk, cgi, cgitb, crypt, imghdr, mailcap, msilib, nis, nntplib, ossaudiodev, pipes, sndhdr, spwd, sunau, telnetlib, uu, xdrlib, lib2to3.
• Many deprecated classes, functions, and methods (dead batteries) were removed.
• New deprecations appeared, and many of them were scheduled for removal in Python 3.15 or 3.16.

For a detailed list of changes, additions, and removals, you can check out the Changelog document. The next pre-release of Python 3.13 will be 3.13.0b1, which is currently scheduled for May 7.