> >If there were more concern about compatibility -- all 2.0 programs will
>
> >compile an work with 3.0 -- then we would not need to keep the old
>
> >versions.
>
> One of these changes is how #:autoload works. One of the options to preserve
> compatibility yet introduce the new behaviour, could have been to define
> ‘define-module2’ (to be used instead of the (deprecated) ‘define-module’)
> with the new semantics. Since their implementations would share almost all
> code, there wouldn’t be serious implementation costs(*). The only significant
> downside I see here is that ‘define-module2’ is a rather uncool name, but
> that’s a non-issue.
i'd argue with the statement that an aesthetic glitch is a non-issue.
the short version: see the Broken Window phenomenon, and the Turing Tarpit.
the longer version:
you do not see how many potential contributors end up never touching the
codebase because of stuff like `define-module2`. i know how i operate, and i've
seen great coders exhibit similar behavior. i also participated in a few
discussions about how and why we got our impressions and made our decisions.
there are various signs of disorder; a few major ones that quickly come to mind:
- a messy filesystem structure
- badly chosen names for abstractions
- a lot of work for M-x whitespace-cleanup
- inconsystent code formatting
- lack of code comments next to kludges. kludges are ok, but
uncommented kludges are a big red sign.
- no attention for failing as early and as loudly as possible.
- a lot of DWIM stuff, where e.g. some names are unnecessarily
generated, which makes navigating (grep'ping) the codebase
hopeless. IOW, unnecessary hindrance for code discoverability.
these things give a quick impression about how much effort and annoyance it
would be to delve into the codebase, and how quickly the invested effor would
yield a bugfix, or a new feature, or answers to questions. and people decide
based on this impression. and there's practically zero feedback about the
number of people deciding *not* to contribute based on such impressions.
in my understanding of how these things work, this is very much *not* a
non-issue.
and this is the reason i spoke up in this thread, not to argue for
indiscriminate cleanups. retaining an ice-9 compatibility falls into the kludge
category, i.e. it's ok if it's clearly marked as a kludge, and if it incurrs
little extra maintenance costs.
--
• attila lendvai
• PGP: 963F 5D5F 45C7 DFCD 0A39
--
“He alone is great and happy who fills his own station of independence, and has
neither to command nor to obey.”
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), 'With the Iron Hand' (1773),
Act I
