41% of the top packages don't support the new version? And looking back, the numbers aren't even much better for previous versions, 3.8 is several versions old now and they've still got over 20% breakage.

That is actually pathetic and I'm not blaming the package authors here - Python needs to stop making big breaking changes that rototill the codebase continuously.

Breaking changes are pretty serious business in the Java world and there is an incredible amount of thought and research put into even something like modules let alone the JDK17 changes where reflection is being fundamentally changed. Python seems to have an absolutely carefree attitude to language breakage, and I guess why wouldn't they? It's always worked for them.