From: aks Date: 2009-02-15T03:03:35+09:00 Subject: Re: If you are unhappy with the direction of Ruby 1.8.7+, respond On Feb 11, 12:10 pm, Gregory Brown wrote: > This one is for those who wish that Ruby 1.8 would go *back* to being > 1.8.6 compatible in Ruby 1.8.8.   If you agree with this, share your > thoughts or at least a simple '+1'. +1000 We have a reasonable-sized body of code on 1.8.7, in production, that we will not expect to upgrade for a minor release. We expect _some_ compatibility issues with an 1.8 -> 1.9 upgrade. We expect there will be many issues with an 1.8 -> 2.0 upgrade. I have been developing software and managing the development process for almost 30 years, and this issue of an incompatible minor release is a huge violation of the Principle of Least Surprise. If this trend is followed, that of capriciously breaking compatibility on minor point releases, then the language usage rate will diminish, adoption rate will decrease, and the language will become marginalized. People only have so much time and effort to work on problems. A programming language is a tool to solve those problems. If the tool causes MORE work, then another tool will be chosen instead. It's really pretty simple.