4 ms·

It's a pity that there isn't a ubiquitous way to communicate to programmers features that are at risk of being removed or at risk of causing incompatibility wit

by Nutmog 11y ago

It's a pity that there isn't a ubiquitous way to communicate to programmers features that are at risk of being removed or at risk of causing incompatibility with other software. I don't mean some document you have to look up, I mean if you use an at-risk feature, you're given a warning many years before it actually gets removed. Programmers often discover features of APIs by trial and error, not just by reading the manual. At-risk features should include things that may not get removed but aren't supported by every platform - like .Net classes that aren't present in Wine. Sure, MS asks you not to target non-Windows platforms but in reality, users will still try to do it.

yakult 11y ago
That would require the developers to know years in advance that they're going to remove something. In many cases they don't even know if they'll still be around in six months.
spacelizard 11y ago
The tendency to just remove features without so much as a word of warning to users seems pretty popular these days. I think it is most commonly seen as part of a push to remove complexity from the program. Unfortunately this mentality can also make it seem like creating and maintaining channels that warn users of upcoming changes are unnecessary pieces of process complexity. Of course all that is accomplished by this internal simplifying is offloading that complexity to the user who will then complain and/or seek out a way to do what they want to do on their own. Users searching for undocumented features is probably a good thing and should be encouraged. In the case of developers unwilling to communicate properly, all the users can do is try to fill in the gaps themselves by guessing and speculating on what the developers are up to. This, I don't think is such a good thing, and it's somewhat embarrassing when it happens with a social media company whose main product is a communication tool.

by Nutmog 11y ago

yakult 11y ago

That would require the developers to know years in advance that they're going to remove something. In many cases they don't even know if they'll still be around in six months.

spacelizard 11y ago

The tendency to just remove features without so much as a word of warning to users seems pretty popular these days. I think it is most commonly seen as part of a push to remove complexity from the program. Unfortunately this mentality can also make it seem like creating and maintaining channels that warn users of upcoming changes are unnecessary pieces of process complexity. Of course all that is accomplished by this internal simplifying is offloading that complexity to the user who will then complain and/or seek out a way to do what they want to do on their own. Users searching for undocumented features is probably a good thing and should be encouraged. In the case of developers unwilling to communicate properly, all the users can do is try to fill in the gaps themselves by guessing and speculating on what the developers are up to. This, I don't think is such a good thing, and it's somewhat embarrassing when it happens with a social media company whose main product is a communication tool.