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

Along these lines, I'm very very grateful to Neil T for his work
improving the library. Thanks!

Robby

On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 11:51 AM, Neil Van Dyke <neil at neilvandyke.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Oct 2, 2011, at 12:07 AM, Neil Toronto wrote:
>>
>>
>>>
>>> A tad more seriously, if we had a death date for the old one, I could put
>>> it in the library name. You'd have to put
>>>
>>>    (require plot/supported-until-2013-01-01)
>>>
>>
>> I really like this one a lot. -- Matthias
>>
>
>
> So long as nobody thinks that this is necessarily a best practice for
> breaking API in the future, IMHO.
>
> In the case of "plot", the API breaks at the time users have to change their
> "require" form to include this expiration date (and then the API may break a
> *second* time, on or after that date).
>
> I'd see this as not a best practice, but a one-time deal: for the special
> case of the "plot" library that few people use, and which library we really
> want to get rid of because of the C code, combined with a desire to steal
> the old API's "(require plot)" for the new API.
>
> In the future, we all will have had the benefit of the "plot" experience,
> which teaches us that API breakage will cause a huge amount of discussion,
> which costs the developers time/energy/morale before we even get to what API
> breakage costs users.  So we will consider breaking API only when the win is
> so big that we are willing to endure discussion.  I love that discussion can
> be used not only for collaborative design and problem-solving, but also as
> itself a painful stick to discourage misbehavior.
>
> By all means, just move forward on getting the new "plot" goodness to the
> users, however the API migration is done.  Learning experience has been
> achieved.
>
> --
> http://www.neilvandyke.org/
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