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I'm missing the point. What's the deal with language designers wanting to have just one version of a language? Why can you mix and match Python and C while st

by lelele 16y ago

I'm missing the point. What's the deal with language designers wanting to have just one version of a language? Why can you mix and match Python and C while still not being able to mix and match Python 2 and Python 3? Just stop improving and adding features to the Python 2 side. Of course people want backward compatibility: don't you know that developing software is hard work? Even old and stale libraries can be useful: why should we discard them?

lelele 16y ago
Could anyone please explain why I'm being downvoted? A compiler/interpreter which can compile/interpret two versions of a language is out of this world? I think it's the most pragmatic approach: let people use old libraries while allowing them to develop with the improved language. If I'm not mistaken, ISE Eiffel (now EiffelStudio) can compile both C/C++ and Eiffel sources to make a single executable. ISE Eiffel however is an industrial-strength compiler backed by a great software engineer. Current Common Lisp compilers can compile source code as old as fifty years ago with little or no modifications. Now, that's backward compatibility.