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CoffeeScript is published to NPM, which depends on semver. When people do: npm install coffee-script --save Their app is going to be broken in the future.
by Touche 12y ago
CoffeeScript is published to NPM, which depends on semver. When people do:
npm install coffee-script --save
Their app is going to be broken in the future. It's irresponsible to put this burden on your users because you romanticize a version number. If it's this important simply don't publish to a package manager that is based on semver.
- untog 12y agoIf you aren't shrinkwrapping your NPM dependencies on production code then you're not using NPM correctly. And sure, CoffeeScript could be banished from NPM, but something tells me there would be a lot more complaints about that than about a 1.9.0 breaking change that was actually a bug fix. I prefer a pragmatic approach.
- Touche 12y agoI don't think development vs production matters here, you're still wasting people's time. You can't have it both ways, you can't benefit from the npm ecosystem and then get mad when people are upset that you're not following npm's conventions and wasting their time. If you want to be righteous about something then this is what happens.
- untog 12y agoBenefit from the NPM ecosystem? What benefit, exactly? No-one makes money from the development of CoffeeScript. It being on NPM is a convenience to those who want to use it, not a benefit for the programmer that gets absolutely nothing in return for making it.
- Touche 12y agoJeremy doesn't benefit from having popular JavaScript libraries? This is news to me.
- untog 12y agoInteresting that your choice of phrase is "having" those libraries. Not "creating", "developing" or "maintaining". It's as if they just dropped into his lap or something. Of course there are benefits to being a well known JS developer. But there are also drawbacks to spending a huge amount of personal time developing projects that hundreds of thousands of people depend upon and taking no money in return. Come on. Don't get me wrong, breaking changes in code are A Bad Thing. But it irks me that instead of everyone saying "oh, what an unfortunate mistake, how can we fix it?" they say "Jeremy broke my app".
- Touche 12y agoYou're getting far off track here. Regardless of the reason for publishing to NPM, he does so knowing that it will break people's applications. You seem to be suggesting that he owes them nothing; I'm saying he owes them the courtesy not to poke them in their eyes.
- geoffharcourt 12y agoIf breaking an undocumented feature is such an egregious affront, the proper approach would be to vote with your feet.