I like the walrus operator in principle. And if it had been added to early versions of Python 3 I would embrace it. But I cannot, because I have to support Python 3.6, 3.7 in the wild and will for some time. Large organizations tend to standardize on a specific dot release of Python for awhile, and I think that's sensible. So for libraries I develop and/or support, I literally cannot use newer language features. New library developers don't always appreciate this and by using these language features end up cutting off a good chunk of their potential user base. Standard library additions often have the same problem but they can usually accommodated with backports, conditional imports, and other strategies. But feeding new syntax to old parsers causes fatal errors.