Python 3.11, the latest major release of the popular programming language, was released on October 24, 2022. This release includes a number of performance and feature improvements, as well as some new syntax features.
Performance Improvements
One of the biggest changes in Python 3.11 is a significant speed improvement. The Python team has been working on improving the performance of the language for several releases, and Python 3.11 is the culmination of those efforts. In some cases, Python 3.11 is up to 60% faster than Python 3.10.
This performance improvement is due to a number of factors, including:
- A new bytecode compiler that is more efficient.
- A new garbage collector that is more aggressive.
- A number of optimizations to the standard library.
Feature Improvements
In addition to the performance improvements, Python 3.11 also includes a number of new features. These include:
- Exception Groups: This new feature allows you to group multiple exceptions together and handle them all at once.
- Exceptions with Notes: This new feature allows you to add notes to exceptions, which can be helpful for debugging.
- tomllib: This new module provides support for parsing TOML files, which is a popular configuration file format.
- Fine-grained Error Locations in Tracebacks: This new feature allows you to see the exact expression that caused an error, instead of just the line number.
- Variadic Generics: This new feature allows you to create generic functions that can take a variable number of arguments.
- Marking Individual TypedDict Items as Required or Not-Required: This new feature allows you to specify whether or not individual items in a TypedDict are required.
- Self Type: This new feature allows you to specify the type of the
selfparameter in a class. - Arbitrary Literal String Type: This new feature allows you to create literal strings that can contain any character, including control characters.
- Data Class Transforms: This new feature allows you to transform data classes in a variety of ways.
Conclusion
Python 3.11 is a significant release that includes a number of performance and feature improvements. If you are using Python, I encourage you to upgrade to Python 3.11 and take advantage of these new features.
Here are some resources to learn more about Python 3.11:
- The Python 3.11 What’s New documentation: https://docs.python.org/3/whatsnew/3.11.html
- The Python 3.11 tutorial: https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/
- The Python 3.11 documentation: https://docs.python.org/3/