On Monday, July 25, 2016 at 9:01:47 AM UTC-7, Volker Braun wrote: > > A language that did not change in the last 20 years is dead, plain and > simple. >
I see relatively little problem with languages that grow by accretion of libraries, though there are conflicts when (for example) two different, incompatible, libraries attempt to solve the same problem (e.g. graphical user interface). I see some problems with languages that change syntax by some extension mechanism. One problem is that two different versions may emerge with conflicting interpretations. I see some real problems with languages that change the semantics of existing language constructs. Has Common Lisp changed in the last 20 years? Lots of contributed libraries etc. The standard has not changed. Implementations have changed. Should there be a new standards committee? I can't say. If someone told me that I would have to rewrite programs in language X from about 50 years ago or they might stop working, I would view that a reason not to use X. Is this an absolute? No, there might be positive reasons for using X that might balance it. Just wondering if, at the outset, one would again choose Python, knowing that there would be a requirement to continually rewrite stuff to be compatible with the latest version. RJF > Lets just look at strings, which is also one of the reasons driving the > breaking change between Python 2 and 3. Back in the 90's it was ok to just > take them as arrays of C chars. But nowadays you'd be totally crazy to not > use unicode as the base implementation of strings. There are still > languages around that only support unicode with bolted-on libraries, but > thats just the smell of rotten flesh. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
