On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 6:51 PM, Bulat Ziganshin
Hello Simon,
Tuesday, February 26, 2008, 7:34:50 PM, you wrote:
Use openBinaryFile (or hSetBinaryMode) and your program will work with all compilers, both before and after this change.
it is what i mean - we just have found one more way to break compatibility with existing haskell code. it is important part of our efforts to keep haskell community as small as possible, ideally it should include just authors of haskell tools itself
Python 3000 is backwards incompatible with many current Python programs. I don't expect lots of Pythonistas to jump ship because of it. In the process of thinking about what should go into Python 3000 they recognized that breaking backwards compatibility was necessary to fix some problems (e.g. the same Unicode problems as we have in the Haskell community.) Agreed, you don't want to continuously break people's programs but I think it's OK to sometimes do it if it's really needed for the long-term usefulness of the language. We should look at the Python community and try to provide an as smooth upgrade path as possible. One possibility is to keep old compilers around for a time. -- Johan