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This is an interesting story. Python breaks perfectly reasonable code which is surprisingly nothing new for Python. A tool stops working. Users want fix. Author

by modsec 8y ago

This is an interesting story. Python breaks perfectly reasonable code which is surprisingly nothing new for Python. A tool stops working. Users want fix. Author of the tool is unavailable. The tool needs to be forked. A new name needs to be chosen. A new distribution point needs to be established. All because Python chooses to break existing code. Can't the software designers of this century choose to provide feature flags (use strict, use VERSION, etc.) to enable new features that break existing code? There was a nice and popular article/blog post from someone famous about never ever breaking existing code or functionality because users depend on it but I cannot remember the title of that post to search it.

yashap 8y ago
I guess you’re mostly complaining about Python 2->3? That was a long time ago, and Python is hardly the only language to introduce a new, breaking major version. This is a code analysis tool, quite different from your average library. It broke because Python introduce new reserved keywords (async/await). This is a non-breaking change for almost all libraries/software (and if it IS breaking for you, you probably just have to change variable names or something similar), but code analysis tools are different, they have to be totally up to date with new language features. Lots of languages introduce new reserved keywords decently often (in fact, lots have explicitly added async and await somewhat recently), it tends to break very little, except code analysis tools.
wink 8y ago
Not that I disagree, but "async" is such a generic and widespread term that I can easily understand why they wouldn't want to choose something else. Have you read the kerfuffle about https://github.com/staltz/prevent-smoosh https://github.com/staltz/prevent-smoosh et al?
rogue_ache 8y ago
I think you are referring to https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost-the-api-war/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost...

by modsec 8y ago

yashap 8y ago

I guess you’re mostly complaining about Python 2->3? That was a long time ago, and Python is hardly the only language to introduce a new, breaking major version. This is a code analysis tool, quite different from your average library. It broke because Python introduce new reserved keywords (async/await). This is a non-breaking change for almost all libraries/software (and if it IS breaking for you, you probably just have to change variable names or something similar), but code analysis tools are different, they have to be totally up to date with new language features. Lots of languages introduce new reserved keywords decently often (in fact, lots have explicitly added async and await somewhat recently), it tends to break very little, except code analysis tools.

wink 8y ago

Not that I disagree, but "async" is such a generic and widespread term that I can easily understand why they wouldn't want to choose something else. Have you read the kerfuffle about https://github.com/staltz/prevent-smoosh https://github.com/staltz/prevent-smoosh et al?

rogue_ache 8y ago

I think you are referring to https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost-the-api-war/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost...