Breaking Changes and Long Term Support Haskell

[Augustsson, Lennart]

I'd like to vehemently agree with Henrik here. :)

Personally, I think AMP was the right thing to do, but I don't think FTP was the right thing.
And I don't think changes that break code are necessarily bad either, just some of them.

(To clarify, I'm against the Foldable class, but not Traversable.  It would have been quite feasible to have the latter, but not the former.)

  -- Lennart


-----Original Message-----
From: Haskell-prime [mailto:haskell-prime-bounces at haskell.org] On Behalf Of Henrik Nilsson
Sent: 21 October 2015 11:17
To: haskell-prime at haskell.org List; Haskell Libraries
Subject: Re: Breaking Changes and Long Term Support Haskell

Hi all,

Jeremy wrote:

 > There seems to be a fair amount of friction between those who want to  > introduce new features or fix significant historical warts in the base  > libraries - even if this requires breaking changes - and those who  > insist on no significant breaking changes in new releases, regardless  > of the reason or how much warning was given.

With respect, and without commenting on the merits of the proposal that is then outlined (Long-Term Support Haskell), I don't think this is an accurate description of the two main positions in the debate at all.

Most of those who have argued against MRP, for example, have made it very clear that they are not at all against any breaking change. But they oppose breaking changes to Haskell itself, including central libraries, as defined by the Haskell report, unless the benefits are very compelling indeed.

Speaking for myself, I have had to clarify this position a number of times now, as there has been a tendency by the some proponents of the proposed changes to suggest that those who disagree are against all changes, the long term implication being that Haskell would "stagnate and die".

And in the light of the above, I felt compelled to clarify this position again.

It's not about no more changes ever. It is about ensuring that changes are truly worthwhile and have wide support.

Best,

/Henrik

--
Henrik Nilsson
School of Computer Science
The University of Nottingham
nhn at cs.nott.ac.uk




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