what's the tldr difference between this and .format ?
replies(4):
f"foo is {foo} and {bar=}"
"foo is {} and bar={}".format(foo, bar)
are equivalent.t-strings are actually not strings, but Template objects, giving access to both the templating string and the parameters for processing. Sibling comments describe it as a custom .format implementation in that sense - it's f-string-like sugar where you're also allowed to take control of the .format function that it's sugar for.
t-strings, of course, (will) translate at the bytecode level into instantiation of the Template object (and whatever code is needed to compute the Interpolation values in-place).