PEP 501 when originally written (not by me) was intended to be the competing standard against f-strings, and to have been more inline with ES6's template strings. There was debate between the more simple f-string PEP (PEP 498) and PEP 501. Ultimately, it was decided to go with f-strings as a less confusing, more approachable version (and also easier to implement) and to "defer" PEP 501 to "see what happens". Since then, the python internal have also changed, allowing t-strings to be even easier to implement (See PEP 701). We have seen what happens, and now its introduced. f-strings and t-strings are not competing systems. They are different. Similar to ES6 templates and namedTaggedTemplates, they are used for different things while API feels similar intentionally.
f-strings are not inferior to t-strings, they are better for most use cases of string templating where what you really want, is just a string.
> they are better for most use cases of string templating where what you really want, is just a string.
I think use cases where you want to unconditionally bash a string together are rare. I'd bet that in > 80% of cases the "just a string" really is just a terrible representation for what really is either some tree (html, sql, python, ...) structure or at least requires lazy processing (logging, where you only want to pay for the expensive string formatting and generation if you run at the log level or higher that the relevant logging line is meant to operate).
If the "just a string" is html, sql, python, etc., the programmer is making a mistake as string interpolation shouldn't be used for those things in the first place, and I really hope < 80% cases of "just a string" are among those.
"just a string" where the string really is just a string is really, really common though. Python is the go-to language for a lot of people (including me) if they just want to bash together a one-time-use script that will never see input from other people, and f-strings are incredibly useful in such cases for generating filenames, debugging messages, etc.
