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On Saturday 28 January 2006 17:13, Wilson Bilkovich wrote:
> My opinion is rather extreme: if Ruby is already at a point where
> something in the stdlib can't be improved without a fork, it might be
> time to start shopping for a new language.

Well, I don't entirely understand this point of view, but I think I know what 
you mean.

> If you're familiar with Java, you'll know how crazy it is to browse
> the standard library.  Partly this is because things marked for

Yeah.  That is a different sort of backwards compatibility, though.  I'm 
considering deprecating an entire *package*.  But, as I said, I'm still 
trying to find a reasonable way through this.

> If the library does get renamed, I'd vote to have the old "REXML1"
> library dropped from the distribution.  That makes it clear that
> things have changed, without silently breaking old code.  Old code

That's the thing.  If REXML (current) stays in there for a while, nothing 
breaks.  Maybe I generate some warnings when you require it.  At the same 
time, I introduce XML, which has the optimizations.  For a while, they live 
side by side.  Then, in Ruby 3.0, REXML disappears.

If I'm going to break applications, I want to give a lot of warning.

> significantly.  I can't readily think of a language that had a
> "compatibility or else" restriction when doing a major revision that
> turned out to make people happy.
> Java 1.0 -> 1.5, C -> C++, Perl -> Perl 6, etc, etc.

Java 1.0 -> 1.5 didn't break anything.  Java 1.0 code is legal 1.5 code.  And 
C++ isn't so much an upgrade to C as an entirely different language.  I can't 
speak to Perl, because... well... I stopped using Perl about the same time I 
discovered Ruby.

I understand what you're saying.  It is the easiest, most efficient solution 
for developers, but it is a major pain for people using the library.  And 
I'll get the hate mail. :-)

-- 
--- SER

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, 
more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.  On some 
great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach 
their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned 
by a downright moron."        -  H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

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