On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 12:32 PM, Neil Van Dyke <n...@neilvandyke.org> wrote: > Robby Findler wrote at 09/30/2011 01:05 PM: >> >> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 12:01 PM, John Clements >> <cleme...@brinckerhoff.org> wrote: >> >>> >>> In my world, a change will fall into the "yes, racket is a rapidly >>> changing language" bin; >>> it's not unusual for much of my old code to be broken. >>> >> >> I realize this is a meta question, but is this the world we really >> want Racket to be in? >> > > I want it to be stable (backward-compatible changes in general). However, I > also want it to continue to innovate. I think that the interactivity > between the developers and users of the platform permits us to have both. > Sometimes, you can simply ask "hey, is it OK with everyone if I break > such-and-such slightly, requiring you to make a small code change?", and if > the answer is yes, you collectively save a person-week of work and also > avoid some legacy cruft.
In this case, the two alternatives are the same amount of work, if I understand correctly. > On the other hand, if you want Racket to be an exercise and showcase for > perfect backward compatibility, that might be interesting. Perhaps someone > can find some novel techniques to help do that, and some way of > demonstrating the contribution (seamless backward compatibility throughout > evolution, without some cost that systems traditionally incur to satisfy > that). I don't think that we're even close to this. :) Roby _________________________________________________ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users
