4 ms·

Python is definitely the exception, not the rule.

dcow 3y ago
Swift shipped source-breaking updates earlier in its lifetime. I honestly don't really know of a story where a source-incompatible update killed a language. People grumble, then they move on.
- addaon 3y ago
  > I honestly don't really know of a story where a source-incompatible update killed a language. Perl, with the Perl 5 -> Perl 6 (later Raku) transition? Fortran, with the F77 -> F95 transition?
- ainar-g 3y ago
  > I honestly don't really know of a story where a source-incompatible update killed a language. Death may not come as swiftly (heh) as you think. I know a few people (including myself) who, when deciding which language to add to their toolbox, had decided against Swift because of its reputation as “that language that always breaks code”, among other reasons. There are just a few anecdotal data points, of course, but I don't think it's controversial to say that a history of messy updates definitely makes new people less likely to learn a language without an absolute necessity.
- throwaway894345 3y ago
  The pain of breaking changes is proportional to the volume of code affected by the breakage. This usually means breakages early in the lifetime are easy because there's relatively little code. For mainstream languages that have a decade or more of widespread usage, a breakage is a big deal. > I honestly don't really know of a story where a source-incompatible update killed a language. Perl. I mean, Perl isn't strictly dead, but its share of the market plummeted. Python almost certainly would have suffered a similar fate if it weren't for the explosion of interest in scientific/numeric computing (which more than made up for massive attrition to other languages, including Go).
- _ph_ 3y ago
  Killed, in the sense of no one ever migrated? Certainly not. Killed, in the sense of hugely impacting the eco system and the community? Quite regularly. Python seems to finally mostly have made the transition, but there is just a lot of software around which will never be ported to Python 3. Perl almost completely went away, until finally development of Perl 5 gained some traction, but also with promises of maintaining compatibility.

dcow 3y ago

Swift shipped source-breaking updates earlier in its lifetime. I honestly don't really know of a story where a source-incompatible update killed a language. People grumble, then they move on.

addaon 3y ago
> I honestly don't really know of a story where a source-incompatible update killed a language. Perl, with the Perl 5 -> Perl 6 (later Raku) transition? Fortran, with the F77 -> F95 transition?
ainar-g 3y ago
> I honestly don't really know of a story where a source-incompatible update killed a language. Death may not come as swiftly (heh) as you think. I know a few people (including myself) who, when deciding which language to add to their toolbox, had decided against Swift because of its reputation as “that language that always breaks code”, among other reasons. There are just a few anecdotal data points, of course, but I don't think it's controversial to say that a history of messy updates definitely makes new people less likely to learn a language without an absolute necessity.
throwaway894345 3y ago
The pain of breaking changes is proportional to the volume of code affected by the breakage. This usually means breakages early in the lifetime are easy because there's relatively little code. For mainstream languages that have a decade or more of widespread usage, a breakage is a big deal. > I honestly don't really know of a story where a source-incompatible update killed a language. Perl. I mean, Perl isn't strictly dead, but its share of the market plummeted. Python almost certainly would have suffered a similar fate if it weren't for the explosion of interest in scientific/numeric computing (which more than made up for massive attrition to other languages, including Go).
_ph_ 3y ago
Killed, in the sense of no one ever migrated? Certainly not. Killed, in the sense of hugely impacting the eco system and the community? Quite regularly. Python seems to finally mostly have made the transition, but there is just a lot of software around which will never be ported to Python 3. Perl almost completely went away, until finally development of Perl 5 gained some traction, but also with promises of maintaining compatibility.