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Python 3.7 Goes Live, 3.6 Gets Maintenance Update

This week the open source community that develops the Python language, often used for machine learning projects (as well as many others), announced that a new version -- Python 3.7.0 -- has been released.

Python 3.7 offers developers a host of new features, including:

  • A new way to declare data classes (PEP 557)
  • Adding breakpoint () to the built-in functions list (PEP 553)
  • New library modules including contextvars with new C APIs to give support for context variables (PEP 567), and dataclasses (PEP 557) for declaring data classes, plus importlib.resources.
  • -X dev, a new development runtime mode for CPython
  • A move away from ASCII for default text encoding in CPython.
  • Significant changes and improvements to asyncio, the concurrency module that was introduced in Python 3.4

As well as many more. A complete list can be found here.

Also this week, Python 3.6.6. was released. Version 3.6.6. is an update of Python 3.6. Some of the new features in this update include simpler customization of class creation, literal string formatting and preserving keyword augment order. A complete list of changes can be found here.

Version 3.6 of Python will be supported by the community with bug fixes through 2018 and security fixes through 2021, the community announcement states.

Interested developers can find out more about participating in the Python community here.

About the Author

Becky Nagel serves as vice president of AI for 1105 Media specializing in developing media, events and training for companies around AI and generative AI technology. She also regularly writes and reports on AI news, and is the founding editor of PureAI.com. She's the author of "ChatGPT Prompt 101 Guide for Business Users" and other popular AI resources with a real-world business perspective. She regularly speaks, writes and develops content around AI, generative AI and other business tech. Find her on X/Twitter @beckynagel.

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