4 ms·

i like fast movement, i like communities that dare to break things every now and then (see semver.org for the widely accepted versioning rules and should be hon

by cies 13y ago

i like fast movement, i like communities that dare to break things every now and then (see semver.org for the widely accepted versioning rules and should be honoured). much do i prefer an increasingly better solution to a stable one. i'm not agueing "perfect" over "good enough"; i'm argueing "awesome" over "good enough" :)

xradionut 13y ago
You might be a great Microsoft developer. Use this API, no this one, nope now this one, you almost caught up, so we released a newer, more better one! Please buy Awesome Studio and RDMS 2015 or you are a loser. Here's a free version that can't do shit, the Pro version is only $2000, plus lots of your time adjusting to a newer mono/flat chrome development environment. Hot keys only for touch screen users!
- pjmlp 13y ago
  I can give such examples for any commercial vendor and in terms of breaking compatibility, there are a few examples in FOSS land as well.
  - shadowfox 13y ago
    > I can give such examples for any commercial vendor and in terms of breaking compatibility, there are a few examples in FOSS land as well But that wouldn't have the same emotional appeal as MS ;)
  - rmc 13y ago
    Microsoft are a massive tech company though.
- danso 13y ago
  Correct me if my history is a little fuzzy, but isn't it Apple that plays the part of "move fast, worry later" so well? After all, Apple has been the front-runner when it comes to things like, "f--k your floppy/CD drive/FireWire/display-adapter, we're moving on", and that's just in hardware. Microsoft has actually done a pretty good job maintaining backwards compatibility, considering the size of their user base and variety of software to accommodate. Though perhaps that makes it a better metaphor for PHP development than Python.
  - dangayle 13y ago
    It's not like you still couldn't plug in an old CD drive into your Mac. It will still work just fine. You can't plug in an old Python 2.x plugin into Python 3.x.
    - tripzilch 13y ago
      Why not. Are you familiar with SciPy's `weave` module? It's basically a plugin for plugging C++ code into your Python. In a variety of extremely cool compile-on-the-fly ways. It's really quite sweet :) No reason you can't do that with Python 2.7. Should be easier in fact because the interface will be much thinner. I am NOT saying this is a good idea however! Haha
      - dangayle 13y ago
        That's interesting. I'll look it up.
  - jodrellblank 13y ago
    Microsoft maintains good backward compatibility, but has a habit of releasing a new way of doing things every five minutes. Particularly look at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms810810.aspx#bkmk_DepMDAC_WDACComps http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms810810.aspx#bkmk_D... and windows current / deprecated/obsoleted ones. Just to connect your Windows program to a Microsoft database.
    - LammyL 13y ago
      To be fair, most of those deprecated technologies are 10 to 20 years old and use paradigms that wouldn't cut it with how we build software today.
  - cookiecaper 13y ago
    Apple wants users to buy new hardware and I guess they figure it's not a big deal because you can buy adapters and/or hardware is usually bought together in generations. Their software APIs have remained quite stable; certainly no Silverlight-esque shenanigans from them.
- cies 13y ago
  Thanks for the advice; only 2000 for "pro"? Wow! Where can I pay?
- Pxtl 13y ago
  No, Microsoft never breaks anything. They deprecate relentlessly and push out new libs to replace old ones, but they never have the balls to actually fix anything. It's immensely frustrating that no lib ever reaches better than 80% good. It goes "1.0broken -> 1.1usable -> 2.0baroque -> 2.1deprecated -> Replacement lib 1.0broken".
- pmelendez 13y ago
  >"Here's a free version that can't do shit" Depends what you are doing. I worked in a multinational mobile game studio and developers were using Visual C++ express, which was actually pretty capable for what we were doing.
Sami_Lehtinen 13y ago
You clearly aren't running extensive production systems with little administrative resources. Code is written 15 years ago, and it's still running. Any changes that break something are major headache, usually leading rolling things back to working version. Nobody knows or cares to fix those things to achieve compatibility with new version. This leads to situation where nothing at all is ever updated. And even known bugs and exploits aren't getting fixed. Oh well, that's business as usual. But when I'm writing new code, I'm of course using Python 3.
- dded 13y ago
  > But when I'm writing new code, I'm of course using Python 3. There's no "of course" about it, which is the point of the article. It is interesting that you're using Python3. It means that you're not blocked by library availability (public or company-internal). It means that you are permitted by management to use it. It probably means that you prefer it. My situation is different on the last two points, but I am also not blocked by library availability.

by cies 13y ago

xradionut 13y ago

You might be a great Microsoft developer. Use this API, no this one, nope now this one, you almost caught up, so we released a newer, more better one! Please buy Awesome Studio and RDMS 2015 or you are a loser. Here's a free version that can't do shit, the Pro version is only $2000, plus lots of your time adjusting to a newer mono/flat chrome development environment. Hot keys only for touch screen users!

pjmlp 13y ago
I can give such examples for any commercial vendor and in terms of breaking compatibility, there are a few examples in FOSS land as well.
- shadowfox 13y ago
  > I can give such examples for any commercial vendor and in terms of breaking compatibility, there are a few examples in FOSS land as well But that wouldn't have the same emotional appeal as MS ;)
- rmc 13y ago
  Microsoft are a massive tech company though.
danso 13y ago
Correct me if my history is a little fuzzy, but isn't it Apple that plays the part of "move fast, worry later" so well? After all, Apple has been the front-runner when it comes to things like, "f--k your floppy/CD drive/FireWire/display-adapter, we're moving on", and that's just in hardware. Microsoft has actually done a pretty good job maintaining backwards compatibility, considering the size of their user base and variety of software to accommodate. Though perhaps that makes it a better metaphor for PHP development than Python.
- dangayle 13y ago
  It's not like you still couldn't plug in an old CD drive into your Mac. It will still work just fine. You can't plug in an old Python 2.x plugin into Python 3.x.
  - tripzilch 13y ago
    Why not. Are you familiar with SciPy's `weave` module? It's basically a plugin for plugging C++ code into your Python. In a variety of extremely cool compile-on-the-fly ways. It's really quite sweet :) No reason you can't do that with Python 2.7. Should be easier in fact because the interface will be much thinner. I am NOT saying this is a good idea however! Haha
    - dangayle 13y ago
      That's interesting. I'll look it up.
- jodrellblank 13y ago
  Microsoft maintains good backward compatibility, but has a habit of releasing a new way of doing things every five minutes. Particularly look at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms810810.aspx#bkmk_DepMDAC_WDACComps http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms810810.aspx#bkmk_D... and windows current / deprecated/obsoleted ones. Just to connect your Windows program to a Microsoft database.
  - LammyL 13y ago
    To be fair, most of those deprecated technologies are 10 to 20 years old and use paradigms that wouldn't cut it with how we build software today.
- cookiecaper 13y ago
  Apple wants users to buy new hardware and I guess they figure it's not a big deal because you can buy adapters and/or hardware is usually bought together in generations. Their software APIs have remained quite stable; certainly no Silverlight-esque shenanigans from them.
cies 13y ago
Thanks for the advice; only 2000 for "pro"? Wow! Where can I pay?
Pxtl 13y ago
No, Microsoft never breaks anything. They deprecate relentlessly and push out new libs to replace old ones, but they never have the balls to actually fix anything. It's immensely frustrating that no lib ever reaches better than 80% good. It goes "1.0broken -> 1.1usable -> 2.0baroque -> 2.1deprecated -> Replacement lib 1.0broken".
pmelendez 13y ago
>"Here's a free version that can't do shit" Depends what you are doing. I worked in a multinational mobile game studio and developers were using Visual C++ express, which was actually pretty capable for what we were doing.

Sami_Lehtinen 13y ago

You clearly aren't running extensive production systems with little administrative resources. Code is written 15 years ago, and it's still running. Any changes that break something are major headache, usually leading rolling things back to working version. Nobody knows or cares to fix those things to achieve compatibility with new version. This leads to situation where nothing at all is ever updated. And even known bugs and exploits aren't getting fixed. Oh well, that's business as usual. But when I'm writing new code, I'm of course using Python 3.

dded 13y ago
> But when I'm writing new code, I'm of course using Python 3. There's no "of course" about it, which is the point of the article. It is interesting that you're using Python3. It means that you're not blocked by library availability (public or company-internal). It means that you are permitted by management to use it. It probably means that you prefer it. My situation is different on the last two points, but I am also not blocked by library availability.