From: "David A. Black" <dblack@...>
Date: 2009-02-13T01:26:27+09:00
Subject: Re: If you are unhappy with the direction of Ruby 1.8.7+, respond

On Fri, 13 Feb 2009, David A. Black wrote:

> Much, much more has been said about the issues involved in the recent
> version policy than that it's bad to introduce any new methods in
> teeny versions (and that, as far as I can see, has *not* been said).

A followup to this:

I think there are two important points to keep in mind. First, it's a
matter of degree, not kind. In other words, no one is saying that
1.8.7 should be indistinguishable from 1.8.6. It's more the quantity
of change that's at issue. Here's a very crude metric, showing the
results of instance_methods(false) for various classes and modules
across three 1.8 versions:

1.8.2
String: 83
Array: 71
Hash: 45
Range: 15
Enumerable: 22

1.8.6
String: 83
Array: 71
Hash: 45
Range: 15
Enumerable: 22

1.8.7
String: 91
Array: 83
Hash: 47
Range: 15
Enumerable: 43

(Gotta love Range :-)

Of course there's no cut-off point where it ceases to be good, or
whatever. It's a matter of judgment.

The second important point is that it's not so much a matter of 1.8.7
not running 1.8.6 code, as the degree to which people expect teeny
versions to behave the way they always have -- and that means, in the
main, developing 1.8.7 code and expecting no more than a few bug-fixes
and maybe the necessity to shim a couple of methods when running it on
1.8.6 installations.

I don't think there's any question about the fact that 1.8.7 redefined
the teeny method semantics, and that it all goes back to the 1.10
issue. And of course the numbering is arbitrary and human-made, and a
given sequence of digits isn't inherently better or worse than another
sequence. It's about expectations and how the changes, once made, play
out.


David

-- 
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