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> it would not have been obvious to me a priori that something that was declared version 2 already wasn't stable Swift came out in Sept. 2014 and v2 in 2015. J
by dehrmann 5y ago
> it would not have been obvious to me a priori that something that was declared version 2 already wasn't stable
Swift came out in Sept. 2014 and v2 in 2015. Just knowing that the language was 1.5 years old would bring long-term compatibility doubts to mind.
- laumars 5y agoThat’s not really fair. For example Go programs written in v1.0 are still mostly compilable (the few tweaks you do need to make aren’t substantial). Rightly or wrongly Apple very much decided Swift should take a different approach to backward compatibility.
- dehrmann 5y agoYou're always rolling the dice with new languages; Go just happened to be mostly compatible. If you want something that will compile in 20 years, pick something with a track record.
- mst 5y agoMy perl5 version 8 code still runs perfectly on version 34, and for all people's (often valid) dislike of perl still helps a lot of companies make a lot of money. That wasn't the point I was trying to make in that particular comment though.
- laumars 5y agoMost languages offer some guarantee by the time they hit version 1, let alone 2. Take Python for example, v2 took a decade to deprecate. Swift is the edge case on this one. Not the norm.