[ruby-core:89061] Re: [Ruby trunk Feature#5400][Assigned] Remove flip-flops in 2.0

[e-mail] wrote:
> There were some programs that used flip-flops in build
> scripts.  I rewrote them to a code that does not use
> flip-flops.  The work was harder than I expected.
>
> Honestly I'm unsure if deprecation of flip-flops is really a right way...
>
> https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/5400#change-72504

I don't think it is a good idea to deprecate or remove features
we've supported for so long.

I've been pondering on this issue more while I away...

These warnings in scripting languages annoy USERS.  In contrast
with compiled languages: only programmers see the warning when
they compile, most users never see warnings from gcc/clang.
This gives languages like C more freedom than us to deprecate
things (e.g. gets(3)).

Furthermore, with compiled languages, the old build will
continue working forever without annoying the user.  I have
small C programs which haven't been rebuilt in a decade or
more, yet still run fine.

Scripting language users don't have that luxury and will
be affected by breakage when their distro upgrades Ruby for
them.

Not every user is a programmer and can fix every warning they
encounter.  And often times, the programmer who originally wrote
the script has long moved on and a new user will choose
something written in a different language.

Looking back to a decade ago, I saw many people leave Ruby
because migrating to 1.8 to 1.9 was too painful and the language
was viewed as too volatile.  Yet we still keep making the same
mistakes and lose users as a result :<

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