David E Jones wrote: > I just want to make one thing clear related to this: if _I_ make changes that > are not backward compatible then it's because they are really important and > no one should question them; if anyone else makes (or proposes) a change that > I don't like and I can raise the backward compatibility flag then I will, and > you should respect that and just don't do whatever the thing is. Don't worry, > I'll be sure to make strong statements and appeal to authority and popularity > of patterns so that you can justify it to whoever you feel responsible to. Of > course, those outward reasons are the very things that you'll never be able > to argue against, no matter how inapplicable or extreme or pragmatically > unhelpful they might be. > > Now, if anyone disagrees with my position on this then that's fine, as long > as you don't feel like you can behave this way and that you never have > behaved this way. Any challengers? > > -Not David
Gah, I hate you now. I just ruined a perfectly good keyboard, it's covered in coffee. And my shirt is going to be stained. > > P.S. On a more serious note, I'm not a huge fan of universal backward > compatibility (or of changes that cause hidden breaking of backward > compatibility... better to break things completely than make things seem like > they are working even though existing code fails, like type conversion > changes and such). Sometimes it takes a while to figure out the best way to > do things, and why keep the problematic and bad ways of doing things when we > do figure it out? If a hexagonal wheel works so much better than a square > wheel that square wheels don't make sense anymore, to the point where they > caused more problems than they solved, why not encourage everyone to change > and just stop supporting the bad design? And yes, sooner or later we're gonna > figure out that a good round shape is better than a hexagon and then we'll > have to change again... and it'll be WELL worth it and users will thank us a > lot for fixing those issues. Just because we haven't fixed a bad idea for a > long time doesn't make it any better of an idea. Restating what I said earlier, I was never actually against adding a new target. I just took exception to the renaming of the existing one. That implied that it was going away. ps: I think the 'run-' prefix is superfluous. ant install, ant install-demo seems better to me.
