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Re: Initial hack at 'builtin::' namespace | online TODO list ofindividual functions

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From:
Nicholas Clark
Date:
December 15, 2021 19:55
Subject:
Re: Initial hack at 'builtin::' namespace | online TODO list ofindividual functions
Message ID:
YbpIHP48OBRtmEbR@etla.org
On Wed, Dec 15, 2021 at 03:53:07PM +0000, Paul "LeoNerd" Evans wrote:

> I don't really want to make an exhaustive list in email because that'll
> constantly get out of date as people add more ideas and we remove
> implemented ones.


Is there any plan to make *anything* in builtin:: declare that it's
experimental?

Historically we've gone through a lot of pain adding things to core that
turned out to be not correct, or "could be improved", but we didn't want to
change it because by then it had been in a release and it was assumed to be
stable.

Hence the whole idea of experimental features, and having a couple of
releases to see if experiments worked. And all things added by features
were initially experimental, and warned as such, and might change.

Yet it seems that we're bypassing all of that approach, and simply adding
functions to builtin:: which are treated as stable and supported, without
any real cycle of validating that

1) the API is correct
2) the benefit from being in builtin:: outweighs the cost of violating
   "don't repeat yourself" (because they are already have a different
   well known name)


We seem to risk repeating mistakes from 10 years ago. 

Nicholas Clark

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