On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 11:48 AM, David Fetter <david@fetter.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 10:46:10AM -0400, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
>> Robert Haas wrote:
>>> I think the real issue, though, is that answer to Ron's original
>>> question is "No". When backward compatibility gets in the way of
>>> cool new features, that's worth considering. But removing backward
>>> compatibility just for the sake of removing backward compatibility
>>> doesn't really buy us anything. It's basically doing extra work
>>> for no benefit and some possible harm.
>>
>> Well said.
>>
>> I am singularly unimpressed by arguments for removing backwards
>> compatibility features to satisfy someone's passion for neatness, or
>> to force people to conform to how they think their software should
>> be managed. I occasionally shake my head in amazement at the
>> willingness of some people to throw other users under the bus.
>
> This isn't about a "passion for neatness." It's about recognizing
> that some experiments have failed and weeding out the failures. The
> RULE system, for example, was a ground-breaking innovation in the
> sense of being a truly new idea. Evidence over the decades since has
> shown that it was a *bad* idea, and I like to think we're going with
> an evidence-based approach. Things like add_missing_from and
> regex_flavor, to name two examples, are just bletcherous hacks
> invented to solve no-longer-extant problems.
>
> The burden of keeping things like this in the code base is large and
> increasing.
I don't think that's true. That's just an assertion on your part, and
I don't think there's any evidence to back it up.
> There's even a name for it: technical debt.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt
>
> If we're to remain a successful project, the vast majority of our
> community is that of future users, not present or past, so worshipping
> backward compatibility is rejecting the needs of the many in favor of
> the few. Let's at least think a bit before we make a decision to do
> such a thing.
I think we usually think pretty carefully about these decisions on a
case-by-case basis. Making a blanket policy, as proposed here, would
NOT be thinking carefully.
...Robert