[racket] Poll: Does anybody besides Doug use 'plot'?

On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 12:40:49PM -0500, Robby Findler wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 12:32 PM, Neil Van Dyke <neil at neilvandyke.org> wrote:
> > Robby Findler wrote at 09/30/2011 01:05 PM:
> >>
> >> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 12:01 PM, John Clements
> >> <clements at brinckerhoff.org>  wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>>  In my world, a change will fall into the "yes, racket is a rapidly
> >>> changing language" bin;
> >>> it's not unusual for much of my old code to be broken.
> >>>
> >>
> >> I realize this is a meta question, but is this the world we really
> >> want Racket to be in?
> >>
> >
> > I want it to be stable (backward-compatible changes in general).  However, I
> > also want it to continue to innovate.  I think that the interactivity
> > between the developers and users of the platform permits us to have both.
> >  Sometimes, you can simply ask "hey, is it OK with everyone if I break
> > such-and-such slightly, requiring you to make a small code change?", and if
> > the answer is yes, you collectively save a person-week of work and also
> > avoid some legacy cruft.
> 
> In this case, the two alternatives are the same amount of work, if I
> understand correctly.
> 
> > On the other hand, if you want Racket to be an exercise and showcase for
> > perfect backward compatibility, that might be interesting.  Perhaps someone
> > can find some novel techniques to help do that, and some way of
> > demonstrating the contribution (seamless backward compatibility throughout
> > evolution, without some cost that systems traditionally incur to satisfy
> > that).
> 
> I don't think that we're even close to this. :)

It might be something like #lang racket-version6.4.6
with conventions about bug-fixes vs specification changes.
And that would have to remember versions of libraries as well.

But it wouldn't be trivial.

-- hendrik