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I don't understand this: with open-source, it doesn't matter that your CSS compiler has been abandoned: as long as you are satisfied with the current feature se

by idlewan 12y ago

I don't understand this: with open-source, it doesn't matter that your CSS compiler has been abandoned: as long as you are satisfied with the current feature set, the code isn't going to disappear. Stylus is only about 3.5 years old. But if all development were to stop now, I'll still be able to use it 5 years down the road. It probably helps that npm dependencies are pinned to a specific version. C has been around for dozens of years, but you can consider its feature-set pretty much frozen. That's about the same thing as being satisfied with (CSS compiler X)'s feature set and sticking with it. DSLs like the ones for CSS compilers are feature-complete fast enough. You don't need to wait 10 years for it.

mcguire 12y ago
I was merely using the CSS compiler as an example. For something like that, just put a copy in your source repository and forget about it---it'll be fine for a couple of generations of browsers, until the "best current practices" have gone beyond deprecation. I'm sitting here looking at a JRuby on Rails application using JRuby 1.1.4 and a suitably ancient version of Rails (2.2, maybe?). It's been in production for roughly five years and has received essentially no love during that period; it Just Worked[TM]. The poor sod who was responsible for it and our one other Rails application, our one and only Rails developer, finally managed to move on to other things. At this point, security issues and (most likely) the inability to slather on new features have percolated up the chain of command and it has been agreed that Something Must Be Done. Since the upgrade path seems to recapitulate the phylogeny of Rails, our options seem to be to rewrite the applications in a modern Rails and kick the can down the street, hoping it'll work better this time, or rewrite it using our common tools around here (and because I've got something to do with it, in the simplest manner possible). (And against the usual "never rewrite anything, ever" meme---which isn't an option---it's going reasonably well.) As for C, yes, it's feature set has been more-or-less frozen, which is good. It's environment is not. I was reasonably happy with the first version of gcc I used; call it 1.37 or so. Do you think you could use gcc 1.37 today?

by idlewan 12y ago

mcguire 12y ago

I was merely using the CSS compiler as an example. For something like that, just put a copy in your source repository and forget about it---it'll be fine for a couple of generations of browsers, until the "best current practices" have gone beyond deprecation. I'm sitting here looking at a JRuby on Rails application using JRuby 1.1.4 and a suitably ancient version of Rails (2.2, maybe?). It's been in production for roughly five years and has received essentially no love during that period; it Just Worked[TM]. The poor sod who was responsible for it and our one other Rails application, our one and only Rails developer, finally managed to move on to other things. At this point, security issues and (most likely) the inability to slather on new features have percolated up the chain of command and it has been agreed that Something Must Be Done. Since the upgrade path seems to recapitulate the phylogeny of Rails, our options seem to be to rewrite the applications in a modern Rails and kick the can down the street, hoping it'll work better this time, or rewrite it using our common tools around here (and because I've got something to do with it, in the simplest manner possible). (And against the usual "never rewrite anything, ever" meme---which isn't an option---it's going reasonably well.) As for C, yes, it's feature set has been more-or-less frozen, which is good. It's environment is not. I was reasonably happy with the first version of gcc I used; call it 1.37 or so. Do you think you could use gcc 1.37 today?