My concern, and IMO what should be the overwhelming concern of the maintainers, is not the code that is being written, or the code that will be written, but all the code that has been written, and will never be touched again. A break like this will force lots of python users to avoid upgrading to 3.17, jettison packages they may want to keep using, or deal with the hassle of patching unmaintained dependencies on their own.
For those Python users for whom writing python is the core of their work that might be fine. For all the other users for whom python is an foreign, incidental, but indispensable part of their work (scientists, analysts, ...) the choice is untenable. While python can and should strive to be a more 'serious', 'professional' language, it _must_ have respect and empathy for the latter camp. Elevating something that should be a linter rule to a language change ain't that.
For those Python users for whom writing python is the core of their work that might be fine. For all the other users for whom python is an foreign, incidental, but indispensable part of their work (scientists, analysts, ...) the choice is untenable. While python can and should strive to be a more 'serious', 'professional' language, it _must_ have respect and empathy for the latter camp. Elevating something that should be a linter rule to a language change ain't that.