In what year will Python 4.0 be released?
Basic
14
708
2033
0.5%
2024
0.8%
2025
0.8%
2026
0.8%
2027
1.2%
2028
1.2%
2029
3%
2030
3%
2031
3%
2032
85%
2033 or later (or never)

Python is one of the world's most popular programming languages. Development started in 1989, with (see this article for details):

  • Version 1.0 released in 1994,

  • Version 2.0 in 2000, and

  • Version 3.0 in 2008.

At the time of writing, the current version of Python is 3.12.2. In what year will Python 4 be released?

Due to challenges with sunsetting version 2 and migrating from version 2 to 3, many of the core developers (including Python's creator van Rossum) have expressed reticence about a version 4 release. However, since Python depends on C extensions, the need for a version 4 may eventually arise.

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Does anything numbered 4 or larger count, or only something that's semantically incompatible with Python 3?

By way of example, if Python followed the example of several other pieces of software and said "the 3 is never changing, so let's call Python 3.16 just Python 16", how would that affect this market?

@josh Great question -- it needs to be semantically incompatible with Python 3 in order to count.

@burkh4rt I think this is a bit tricky because python doesn't actually follow semver. Python3 minor versions are intentionally backwards incompatible in small ways, e.g. by adding keywords and changing things in the stdlib. But major versions bumps are reserved for strongly incompatible changes according to https://devguide.python.org/developer-workflow/development-cycle/index.html.

@ducat Thanks for this correction -- I've removed the reference to semver from the market description. We're looking for the potential relsease date of Python major version 4 in the major.minor.micro release scheme (as opposed to semver's major.minor.patch). I think this event is fairly well-defined, and I will not be betting in this market.

bought Ṁ25 2033 or later (or ne... YES

my p(doom) is inversely proportional to how soon python 4 arrives

jk, though it would give us a year or so