[Interest] The willy-nilly deletion of convenience methods

Max Paperno max-l at wdg.us
Tue Mar 23 01:40:28 CET 2021


On 3/22/2021 7:32 PM, Turtle Creek Software wrote:
> Re: willy-nilly
....
> I can relate to anyone who is unhappy about deprecated functions.  It is 
> never fun when existing code breaks.  We want to be inventing new stuff, 
> not going back and fixing old code just to stay in the same place.  The 
> C++ language has been decent about advancing, but still keeping ancient 
> code stable.  Windows bends over backwards to stay backwards compatible. 
> I think it's a basic courtesy that all platforms owe to developers.  
> Programming is hard. Doing things once should be enough.

Amen brother, +100.

Life's too short for that BS, and computers are supposed to make our 
lives easier in the first place.

20 years in the life of a language or API or library is nothing (I'm 
over 50, which gives me some perspective). Assuming anyone actually uses 
it for more than a weather app or media browser. Something like that 
needs to last for as long as anyone uses it, and if it's time for it to 
die or be replaced then let it go in peace instead of gutting it and 
pretending it's still the same animal.  And yes I do think Windows has 
done us a great service in this regard... just talk to any non-fanboy 
MacOS developer who is older than 30.  And on *nix of course everyone 
still uses utilities written before they were born.  Stability, baby.

Dear QtC: Just call Qt6 a new library and make it all clean and sexy and 
commercial, or whatever.  But at least do right by everyone who's put 
their time into earlier versions, including by using them, and finish it 
up in style instead of scandal & annoyance. Not only would all the users 
appreciate it, but it just may make you seem more reliable going 
forward.  For me personally 5.12.x is the last Qt branch I will trust 
(until maybe someday all the 5.15 fixes are OS).

Cheers,
-Max



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