3 ms·
Backwards compatibility is vastly overrated, especially when the changes are as modest as the ones that I can see for Varnish 4. Sweep away the cruft. Make thin
by dwb 13y ago
Backwards compatibility is vastly overrated, especially when the changes are as modest as the ones that I can see for Varnish 4. Sweep away the cruft. Make things better.
- stefantalpalaru 13y agoHow many development hours have been wasted because of Python 3, Perl 6, Lua 5.2, any new Django version, Ruby 1.9, Rails 4, jQuery 1.9, Bootstrap 3, etc. ? Backwards compatibility is as simple as not wasting everybody's time. It should be high on the priority list, right under security and above performance. I like Linus' stance on the issue and I'm sure every developer dealing with syscalls appreciates it as well.
- dwb 13y agoHow much development time has been saved and codebase quality increased by making backwards-incompatible changes that improve things drastically? It's a balance, of course – I'm not suggesting old interfaces should be thrown under a bus at the earliest opportunity. But the super-conservative opposite does nothing for progress and ends up with excess technical debt. Varnish 4.0 is a major version release. 3.x still works and will be used by a lot of people for a long time. I really don't see the issue, certainly in this case.