Front page | perl.perl5.porters |
Postings from December 2017
On Fri, Dec 29, 2017 at 7:12 PM, Rocco Caputo <rcaputo@pobox.com> wrote: > On Dec 29, 2017, at 17:32, John Alvord <johngrahamalvord@gmail.com> wrote: > > Seems like an experimental feature that has been allowed to remain for > many years becomes a defacto feature... sort of like a British public > footpath. So remove the experimental designation and reduce > confusion/friction. > > > Grandfathering in experimental features isn't a design process. It should > not be done on the metaphorical eve of having a process. > > I propose that the "experimental" flag be deprecated. > > It doesn't work. People YOLO experimental features into CPAN and > production DarkPAN anyway. Rescinding experimental features becomes > problematic. Perl development stalls because progress would break a lot of > ill-advised code. This bolsters the public expectation that "experimental" > features are safe to use. > > I propose that the "experimental" flag be enforced regardless what breaks. > > Expectations have been managed poorly. One solution is to take a hard > line on experimental features. If the public knows the Porters mean > business, they'll stop YOLOing so much, and the flag might work as > originally intended. > > This is a mostly unique case. The feature was not experimental until Perl 5.18 and many users still use perls older than that, and unfortunately the only way most Perl users can be reached is by warnings their code throws once they upgrade their Perl. The experimental flag has worked as intended in the past both for features that were later dropped (autoderef comes to mind) and features that were later accepted (postderef, lexical subroutines). The only other instance of a retroactively experimental feature I know of is lexical $_, which was removed in Perl 5.24 without much ado (nobody really used it). -DanThread Previous | Thread Next