The 3.4.0 Beta 1 release of the Python programming language has been released.
It is important to note that this is a "preview release" of the next major release of Python (which will be more directly named Python 3.4), and so it is of course classed as not suitable for production environments.
New in this beta release is a memory allocation tracing and better hash algorithms.
There are also augmentations to the language's statistics modules and its asynchronous I/O capabilities.
New here is "pathlib", a module providing object-oriented filesystem paths. But there is also a standardized "enum" module and a build enhancement that will help generate introspection information for built-ins.
As well as improved semantics for object finalization, there is a new C API for implementing custom memory allocators and a standardization of module metadata for Python's module import system.
As comprehensive as these updates at first appear, it is (arguably) still the case that the many forks produced throughout the iteration of the 2.x and 3.x version releases of Python still cause developer headaches and consternation.
