From: James Britt <jamesUNDERBARb@...>
Date: 2005-02-05T10:29:11+09:00
Subject: Re: Is compatibility important for us?

Esteban Manchado Vel�zquez wrote:
>    And, w.r.t. the reply from James Britt, he said:
> 
> 
>>Sad, but unless you are paying someone you shouldn't expect
>>developers to be too concerned with writing new code that runs on
>>older versions of Ruby. (And I expect this is true in most developer
>>communities, so nothing scary about Ruby in this regard.)
> 
> 
>    Yes, you're right, you can't "expect" developers to do that, but I think
> Ruby would gain acceptance if more developers tried to remain compatible.

That's, um, crazy.  Writing new code and checking that it runs in both 
1.6 and 1.8? Then you're basically writing to 1.6.  Or else development 
takes far more time than it is worth, as you have to make sure that 
compatible libraries are available for any 1.8 feature you're using.

I don't quite see how new applications that don't take advantage of new 
and  improved features in a language are really going to win over more 
people.

Does anyone expect that new PHP applications will not take advantage of 
PHP5?  Or when Perl 6 comes out new Perl apps won't leverage things 
unique to Perl 6, and require Perl 6?

Overall, Ruby will attract more users as the number of new kickass 
applications grows, and that number will grow faster if people aren't 
ensuring that their code runs on ruby.previous_version

(BTW, did you intend to say "Ruby would gain *more* acceptance if more 
developers tried to remain compatible"?  Because Ruby is clearly gaining 
not just acceptance, but active usage, despite any compatibility issues.)


> 
>    And I think other languages (read: Perl and probably Python) care _a lot
> more_ in that regard. Please don't get me started on PHP, for several reasons
> ;-)

I'm curious how one might quantify this. Maybe look for some sampling of 
new applications written after the latest version of P* came out, and 
see if they run on an earlier major version?

I'm pretty sure the last time I installed Blender or Zope or something 
Python-based they were quite specific about having a current Python. 
But I haven't made a habit of installing Python apps so my sample space 
is small.

I guess the other test is to find early P* apps and see if they still 
run on current versions of their respective interpreters.  (Not sure if 
I have any perl 4 code anyplace though.  Might be on some Winchester 
drive in the closet, next to the eight-track tapes and Pong.)


James