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>>If a programming language evolves to the point that previous programs written in that language no longer compile then it's no longer the same language. >I do
by 0xffff2 6y ago
>>If a programming language evolves to the point that previous programs written in that language no longer compile then it's no longer the same language.
>I don't really buy that you cannot ever introduce breaking changes. That's a recipe for disaster and IMHO short-sighted.
It's also empirically true in my experience. See Python2/Python3, Perl/Raku, C++98/C++11/C++20. In the latter case, I'm not even sure there are any significant breaking changes, but the feature sets are so different that I find that I pretty much always have to specify which version of C++ I'm talking about.