8 ms·

Can someone please shed some light on why 12 month release cycles are necessary for a language? Why would we want our language to constantly change?

Arkanosis 7y ago
No language is perfect, so languages either improve over time or lose to other languages which do. On why fixed release cycles are a good thing, I find this FAQ by Herb Sutter of C++ fame enlightening: https://herbsutter.com/2019/07/13/draft-faq-why-does-the-c-standard-ship-every-three-years/ https://herbsutter.com/2019/07/13/draft-faq-why-does-the-c-s... It doesn't make them necessary, just likely better than the alternatives (ie. no change or changes “when it's done”).
- Lendal 7y ago
  Given that the pace of technological innovation cannot be stopped and all existing technologies have flaws, the alternatives are: A) Accept that your language will change over time and manage it. B) Over time, keep changing to better languages after your language dies out. Yeah, I think A would be the preferred option.
inglor 7y ago
Because objectively our languages are still quite awful and we still have a ton of progress to make. Look at Python or JavaScript or C++ 10 years ago. They each encompassed the same philosophy they encompass today but lacked a lot of the ergnomics and tooling that make them better languages. Look at Go or Rust 5 years ago. Look at Java. We are constantly improving our languages because improving a language is a great productivity win.
- callesgg 7y ago
  Something can't be objectively awful. Awful is a subjective descriptor.
  - inglor 7y ago
    There are several objective measures for programming language "awfulness". The ones I've seen published the most in papers are: - Time to identify bugs in code - Defects in written software in fixed exercises - Defects in written software in real code - Time to develop a certain program I can't say that the measurements of these is easy - but when we measure these with old vs. new languages we see change. One can claim something can't be "objectively good or bad" in the Popper sense of science only caring about falsifiability or in the Quine sense of "just predicting" but that becomes a philosophical argument and debate. In my opinion since languages are how we express ourselves and we write code in a _very_ roundabout way in many cases - languages are in fact objectively awful, the number of defects is huge, development time is long and developer experience is something few people deal with. The literature on developer experience and programming language API is just starting to emerge and we are still very very early on.
    - inglor 7y ago
      And of course all the research on this is pretty bad, on grad students / biased samples and the methodology isn't great but it's better than nothing and we should strive to improve it. If anything that just shows how bad things are. (Although I believe they really are improving)
    - callesgg 7y ago
      > One can claim something can't be "objectively good or bad" in the Popper sense of science only caring about falsifiability or in the Quine sense of "just predicting" but that becomes a philosophical argument and debate. Yes, one can claim such a thing. However you don't have to debate it you have the foresight to not make claims about the subjective qualities of the objective world.
  - ben_w 7y ago
    Counter-example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_(programming_language) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_(programming_lang...
    - 7y ago
- philwelch 7y ago
  I think Python 3 is a less cohesive and worse-designed language than Python 2 in many ways. JavaScript and C++ should have been abandoned. And yes, let’s look at Java. Scala, Clojure, and Kotlin were all exciting new languages at one point that maintain backwards compatibility by sharing the JVM, obviating the need to make Java itself better—though I will admit that Java itself has improved a hell of a lot.
  - inglor 7y ago
    Java itself has improved a lot taking inspiration from Scala and other languages itself and adding a lot of features (streams lambdas etc). Worth mentioning Kotlin, Scala and Clojure also improved and changed _a lot_ in recent years and so did Go and Rust and other "new" languages that aren't 30 :] Nothing would make me happier than to see JavaScript and C++ abandoned (two of the most popular programming languages and the two I use the most except Python probably). However that would require a lot of work to accomplish and such huge undertaking is usually done a lot more incrementally. Doing it in a "big bang" fashion would be quite a lot of work. That is, JavaScript and C++ are very different than they were 10 or 20 years ago - not just in terms of tooling but also in terms of the language itself.
    - thewhitetulip 7y ago
      I understand improvement, all right. I am not against that. What I feel is wrong here is that we get new features every year. A language should be a minimum set of features that everyone uses and not 'all features everyone would ever need' and long term stability and backward compatibility is a must for a language which is as famous as Python
- elisharobinson 7y ago
  taking something awful and making it less awful is different than making something good better. python is 2 is a good programming language by any standard , i would like to see a fork of python 2 with emphasis on LTS and performance optimization. The whole reason why python became popular is because it had a very shallow learning curve. introducing new cryptic language features every year Is not going to make it easy for new comers. I can say with some certainty that no one is going to use a pure python implementation in production(atleast not yet).
  - hsaliak 7y ago
    pypy is going to continue supporting python 2 indefinitely. They focus on that LTS release and care about performance.
    - elisharobinson 7y ago
      its been a long time since i used it . is it stable ? it anyone using it in prod ? does it have a decent packaging solution ?
      - eesmith 7y ago
        Yes, it's stable. Yes, people are using it in production. (Examples at https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/bv50uz/is_anyone_using_pypy_on_production/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/bv50uz/is_anyone_us... ). Is 'pip' a decent enough packaging solution?
        elisharobinson 7y ago
        cool i will check it out then .
  - inglor 7y ago
    I absolutely agree with this sentiment and seeing Python move further and further from "There should be one obvious way to do it" scares me. I totally get why you'd want a language with async iterators and typings and why you'd want a language with easy data science interop and easy CPU - I am just not sure they should be the same language and I think it should be possible to learn how to do one (e.g. data science) without the other (high throughput async programming, typings etc). I really hope the smart people behind the helm have the foresight to discuss the implications of language size. As someone involved in the process in JavaScript both as Node core and as an individual this deeply concerns me there as well.
- pfranz 7y ago
  > We are constantly improving our languages because improving a language is a great productivity win. I think that ignores the time invested in the upgrade churn and making sure all the little pieces stay compatible. Home OS releases have moved to yearly release cycles and it drives me nuts. AirPods Pro, released in the last few days, requires macOS Catalina 10.15.1 for full compatibility. A lot of software hasn't been updated (and likely will never be updated). I don't mean to single out this one thing, there are countless other examples. Businesses I've worked at have kind of ignored these cycles. CentOS seems to have 1-2 dot releases a year and most places I've been jump to the new one every 3 years or so (major releases even longer). I don't have recent experience with Python because my industry is still stuck on 2.x. The transitions between 2.3, 4, 5, 6, 7 were fairly smooth, but at that pace of new versions and code changes it was pretty common to straddle 3 versions and stumble on bugs fixed long ago in major versions we weren't able to adopt yet. It sometimes feels like we can never make progress in higher level tools because we're trying to keep up with lower level tools.
  - bsder 7y ago
    > AirPods Pro, released in the last few days, requires macOS Catalina 10.15.1 for full compatibility. With Apple, I suspect this is intentional to force you to upgrade. It may not be an active decision, but there is probably zero internal pushback when it happens.
- coliveira 7y ago
  Python designers should learn a thing or two about how C++ and Java people manage their language updates. It makes no sense to use a language that stops supporting features like Python wants to do.
donarb 7y ago
Python is not just the language, there is a standard library that is part of the distribution. That library requires bug fixes and feature updates.
- thewhitetulip 7y ago
  Yes, but what good is a language which was easy to use and one which is now introducing a new feature every year? Do you think everyone will upgrade? At work, we are still stuck with Python 2.7 with no intention to upgrade despite what.
imgabe 7y ago
English constantly changes. We invent new words to encapsulate new concepts that we didn't have before. It's kind of necessary because the world keeps changing. Why not computer languages too?

Arkanosis 7y ago

No language is perfect, so languages either improve over time or lose to other languages which do. On why fixed release cycles are a good thing, I find this FAQ by Herb Sutter of C++ fame enlightening: https://herbsutter.com/2019/07/13/draft-faq-why-does-the-c-standard-ship-every-three-years/ https://herbsutter.com/2019/07/13/draft-faq-why-does-the-c-s... It doesn't make them necessary, just likely better than the alternatives (ie. no change or changes “when it's done”).

Lendal 7y ago
Given that the pace of technological innovation cannot be stopped and all existing technologies have flaws, the alternatives are: A) Accept that your language will change over time and manage it. B) Over time, keep changing to better languages after your language dies out. Yeah, I think A would be the preferred option.

inglor 7y ago

Because objectively our languages are still quite awful and we still have a ton of progress to make. Look at Python or JavaScript or C++ 10 years ago. They each encompassed the same philosophy they encompass today but lacked a lot of the ergnomics and tooling that make them better languages. Look at Go or Rust 5 years ago. Look at Java. We are constantly improving our languages because improving a language is a great productivity win.

callesgg 7y ago
Something can't be objectively awful. Awful is a subjective descriptor.
- inglor 7y ago
  There are several objective measures for programming language "awfulness". The ones I've seen published the most in papers are: - Time to identify bugs in code - Defects in written software in fixed exercises - Defects in written software in real code - Time to develop a certain program I can't say that the measurements of these is easy - but when we measure these with old vs. new languages we see change. One can claim something can't be "objectively good or bad" in the Popper sense of science only caring about falsifiability or in the Quine sense of "just predicting" but that becomes a philosophical argument and debate. In my opinion since languages are how we express ourselves and we write code in a _very_ roundabout way in many cases - languages are in fact objectively awful, the number of defects is huge, development time is long and developer experience is something few people deal with. The literature on developer experience and programming language API is just starting to emerge and we are still very very early on.
  - inglor 7y ago
    And of course all the research on this is pretty bad, on grad students / biased samples and the methodology isn't great but it's better than nothing and we should strive to improve it. If anything that just shows how bad things are. (Although I believe they really are improving)
  - callesgg 7y ago
    > One can claim something can't be "objectively good or bad" in the Popper sense of science only caring about falsifiability or in the Quine sense of "just predicting" but that becomes a philosophical argument and debate. Yes, one can claim such a thing. However you don't have to debate it you have the foresight to not make claims about the subjective qualities of the objective world.
- ben_w 7y ago
  Counter-example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_(programming_language) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_(programming_lang...
  - 7y ago
philwelch 7y ago
I think Python 3 is a less cohesive and worse-designed language than Python 2 in many ways. JavaScript and C++ should have been abandoned. And yes, let’s look at Java. Scala, Clojure, and Kotlin were all exciting new languages at one point that maintain backwards compatibility by sharing the JVM, obviating the need to make Java itself better—though I will admit that Java itself has improved a hell of a lot.
- inglor 7y ago
  Java itself has improved a lot taking inspiration from Scala and other languages itself and adding a lot of features (streams lambdas etc). Worth mentioning Kotlin, Scala and Clojure also improved and changed _a lot_ in recent years and so did Go and Rust and other "new" languages that aren't 30 :] Nothing would make me happier than to see JavaScript and C++ abandoned (two of the most popular programming languages and the two I use the most except Python probably). However that would require a lot of work to accomplish and such huge undertaking is usually done a lot more incrementally. Doing it in a "big bang" fashion would be quite a lot of work. That is, JavaScript and C++ are very different than they were 10 or 20 years ago - not just in terms of tooling but also in terms of the language itself.
  - thewhitetulip 7y ago
    I understand improvement, all right. I am not against that. What I feel is wrong here is that we get new features every year. A language should be a minimum set of features that everyone uses and not 'all features everyone would ever need' and long term stability and backward compatibility is a must for a language which is as famous as Python
elisharobinson 7y ago
taking something awful and making it less awful is different than making something good better. python is 2 is a good programming language by any standard , i would like to see a fork of python 2 with emphasis on LTS and performance optimization. The whole reason why python became popular is because it had a very shallow learning curve. introducing new cryptic language features every year Is not going to make it easy for new comers. I can say with some certainty that no one is going to use a pure python implementation in production(atleast not yet).
- hsaliak 7y ago
  pypy is going to continue supporting python 2 indefinitely. They focus on that LTS release and care about performance.
  - elisharobinson 7y ago
    its been a long time since i used it . is it stable ? it anyone using it in prod ? does it have a decent packaging solution ?
    - eesmith 7y ago
      Yes, it's stable. Yes, people are using it in production. (Examples at https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/bv50uz/is_anyone_using_pypy_on_production/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/bv50uz/is_anyone_us... ). Is 'pip' a decent enough packaging solution?
      - elisharobinson 7y ago
        cool i will check it out then .
- inglor 7y ago
  I absolutely agree with this sentiment and seeing Python move further and further from "There should be one obvious way to do it" scares me. I totally get why you'd want a language with async iterators and typings and why you'd want a language with easy data science interop and easy CPU - I am just not sure they should be the same language and I think it should be possible to learn how to do one (e.g. data science) without the other (high throughput async programming, typings etc). I really hope the smart people behind the helm have the foresight to discuss the implications of language size. As someone involved in the process in JavaScript both as Node core and as an individual this deeply concerns me there as well.
pfranz 7y ago
> We are constantly improving our languages because improving a language is a great productivity win. I think that ignores the time invested in the upgrade churn and making sure all the little pieces stay compatible. Home OS releases have moved to yearly release cycles and it drives me nuts. AirPods Pro, released in the last few days, requires macOS Catalina 10.15.1 for full compatibility. A lot of software hasn't been updated (and likely will never be updated). I don't mean to single out this one thing, there are countless other examples. Businesses I've worked at have kind of ignored these cycles. CentOS seems to have 1-2 dot releases a year and most places I've been jump to the new one every 3 years or so (major releases even longer). I don't have recent experience with Python because my industry is still stuck on 2.x. The transitions between 2.3, 4, 5, 6, 7 were fairly smooth, but at that pace of new versions and code changes it was pretty common to straddle 3 versions and stumble on bugs fixed long ago in major versions we weren't able to adopt yet. It sometimes feels like we can never make progress in higher level tools because we're trying to keep up with lower level tools.
- bsder 7y ago
  > AirPods Pro, released in the last few days, requires macOS Catalina 10.15.1 for full compatibility. With Apple, I suspect this is intentional to force you to upgrade. It may not be an active decision, but there is probably zero internal pushback when it happens.
coliveira 7y ago
Python designers should learn a thing or two about how C++ and Java people manage their language updates. It makes no sense to use a language that stops supporting features like Python wants to do.

donarb 7y ago

Python is not just the language, there is a standard library that is part of the distribution. That library requires bug fixes and feature updates.

thewhitetulip 7y ago
Yes, but what good is a language which was easy to use and one which is now introducing a new feature every year? Do you think everyone will upgrade? At work, we are still stuck with Python 2.7 with no intention to upgrade despite what.

imgabe 7y ago

English constantly changes. We invent new words to encapsulate new concepts that we didn't have before. It's kind of necessary because the world keeps changing. Why not computer languages too?