[Haskell-cafe] Backward compatibility

[Adrian May]

>
>
> I think you're missing the point of the platform!
>

I suppose I did miss the point of the platform: I was trying to build it,
which requires at least part of the platform. As I say, the reason I was
trying to build it was that I wrongly blamed the ubuntu package for WASH
not working. But that was not dumb unless you consider it obvious that 7
year old code would be broken, in which case it would be obvious that
nobody would trust this language in production.

> > And unless somebody can explain to me how I would rescue my business
now if I had opted for WASH
> By patching it. Surely we are talking about minor changes here.

Yeah but how many minor changes? This trigger-happiness is rife.

And that's the first time anybody suggested the necessary changes to WASH
should be minor. Everybody else thinks I was nuts to expect anything from 7
year old code. I don't know because I couldn't get past the install.
Somebody had deleted getPackageId.

Please would somebody explain to me what getPackageId did to incriminate
itself? I'm sure there's something much groovier now, like getting it
inside a monad in case it changes during the installation itself (pretty
likely AFAICT) but it's really just a package id. Can we honestly
philosophise about the mathematical rigour of getPackageId?

It was needlessly assassinated. For all I know WASH might be just fine
apart from that, and maybe I would have liked it, even if it is from the
dark ages.

Yes there are times when something has to change. I acknowledged that in my
original post. But I see no evidence whatsoever that anybody in control of
Haskell is holding fire even on things as innocent as getPackageId or as
ubiquitous as the prelude. I'm not asking for the opposite extreme of
conservatism, just a bit of common sense instead of this bloodbath.
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