Major new features of the 3.4 series, compared to 3.3

Python 3.4 includes a range of improvements of the 3.x series, including hundreds of small improvements and bug fixes. Among the new major new features and changes in the 3.4 release series are

• PEP 428, a "pathlib" module providing object-oriented filesystem paths
• PEP 435, a standardized "enum" module
• PEP 436, a build enhancement that will help generate introspection information for builtins
• PEP 442, improved semantics for object finalization
• PEP 443, adding single-dispatch generic functions to the standard library
• PEP 445, a new C API for implementing custom memory allocators
• PEP 446, changing file descriptors to not be inherited by default in subprocesses
• PEP 450, a new "statistics" module
• PEP 451, standardizing module metadata for Python's module import system
• PEP 453, a bundled installer for the pip package manager
• PEP 454, a new "tracemalloc" module for tracing Python memory allocations
• PEP 456, a new hash algorithm for Python strings and binary data
• PEP 3154, a new and improved protocol for pickled objects
• PEP 3156, a new "asyncio" module, a new framework for asynchronous I/O

More resources

• Change log for this release.
• Online Documentation
• What's new in 3.4?
• 3.4 Release Schedule
• Report bugs at http://bugs.python.org.
• Help fund Python and its community.

Notes on this release:

• The OS X installers are now distributed as signed installer package files compatible with the OS X Gatekeeper security feature.
• The binaries for AMD64 will also work on processors that implement the Intel 64 architecture. (Also known as the "x64" architecture, and formerly known as both "EM64T" and "x86-64".) They will not work on Intel Itanium Processors (formerly "IA-64").
• There is important information about IDLE, Tkinter, and Tcl/Tk on Mac OS X here.