4 ms·

Is there any major language out there that actively removes old/bad parts of it's standard library?

by brown9-2 13y ago

tormeh 13y ago
Scala? It's still a very young language, though.
- brown9-2 13y ago
  What have they removed from the standard library? Just curious.
  - thescrewdriver 13y ago
    It's more a case of replace than remove...
  - frowaway001 13y ago
    Just compare the ScalaDoc of different Scala versions. Things which come to mind (comparing roughly 2.8 (released 2010-07) to 2.11 (released 2013-03)): Classes (just from the top-level scala.* package): - Application - Cell - cloneable - CountedIterator - NotDefinedError - NotNull - Responder - serializable Complete packages: - scala.actors and subpackages - scala.collection.interfaces - scala.concurrent (still exists, but its contents have been replaced completely) - scala.dbc and subpackages - scala.mobile - scala.reflect.generic - scala.swing and subpackages - scala.testing - scala.text - scala.util.automata - scala.util.continuations - scala.util.grammar - scala.util.logging - scala.util.parsing and subpackages (includes parser combinators and JSON) - scala.util.regexp - scala.xml (This of course doesn't include things which were demoted from scala to other namespaces like scala.util, scala.runtime, scala.annotations ...) The list is certainly incomplete anyway...
- acjohnson55 13y ago
  Oh, but it's introduced plenty of quirks of its own, which will have to be painfully removed down the line. Odersky himself is trying to redo and simplify the type system with his Dotty project.
peterashford 13y ago
None that have been successful, and this is the nub of the problem. It's like Soupstrain said: there are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses. A side effect of success is having a large body of existing code to consider when making changes.

Is there any major language out there that actively removes old/bad parts of it's standard library?

tormeh 13y ago

Scala? It's still a very young language, though.

brown9-2 13y ago
What have they removed from the standard library? Just curious.
- thescrewdriver 13y ago
  It's more a case of replace than remove...
- frowaway001 13y ago
  Just compare the ScalaDoc of different Scala versions. Things which come to mind (comparing roughly 2.8 (released 2010-07) to 2.11 (released 2013-03)): Classes (just from the top-level scala.* package): - Application - Cell - cloneable - CountedIterator - NotDefinedError - NotNull - Responder - serializable Complete packages: - scala.actors and subpackages - scala.collection.interfaces - scala.concurrent (still exists, but its contents have been replaced completely) - scala.dbc and subpackages - scala.mobile - scala.reflect.generic - scala.swing and subpackages - scala.testing - scala.text - scala.util.automata - scala.util.continuations - scala.util.grammar - scala.util.logging - scala.util.parsing and subpackages (includes parser combinators and JSON) - scala.util.regexp - scala.xml (This of course doesn't include things which were demoted from scala to other namespaces like scala.util, scala.runtime, scala.annotations ...) The list is certainly incomplete anyway...
acjohnson55 13y ago
Oh, but it's introduced plenty of quirks of its own, which will have to be painfully removed down the line. Odersky himself is trying to redo and simplify the type system with his Dotty project.

peterashford 13y ago

None that have been successful, and this is the nub of the problem. It's like Soupstrain said: there are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses. A side effect of success is having a large body of existing code to consider when making changes.