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[-] xilliah@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

As a game dev updating my ancient backend knowledge I really was confused about this specific topic.

And I feel the same way about the many new languages. Why not just upgrade the existing ones.

If you've ever followed the C++ committee discussions you'll see they put a lot of time and effort into considering legacy code when introducing language changes. For better or worse existing languages are on a trajectory set from their inception that can't always be easily redirected. New languages are free of this baggage and can wildly experiment.

[-] TehPers@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

I wish languages were more willing to release breaking versions, like a C++ v2 or such. That's not to say languages don't already have breaking changes between versions (Python comes to mind), but it would allow people to start fresh and clean up obsolete designs and libraries.

[-] magic_lobster_party@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

You know the cleaning up probably won’t happen. If some dependency doesn’t work anymore because Python introduced a breaking change, then you stick with the old Python version.

[-] thbb@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

Python is actually a good example of this: see the mess that the transition from 2.6 to 3 generated.

[-] magic_lobster_party@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Python 3.7 is another good example. The new await and async keyword broke a lot of programs.

Your last question is equivalent to : why there so many math theories? Can't we just reuse the old ones?

New language appear as a natural product from research in type theory for ex

this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
116 points (96.0% liked)

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