[quote=“swader, post:24, topic:110202”]
But they, the makers of the language, believe they have a good reason. Who is to argue which reason is good and which isn’t? [/quote]
The opinion of a few dozen developers is insignificant when compared with the 240 million or so websites whose applications could suddenly stop working because of “necessary” BC breaks.
Something which fixes a serious bug or security issue can be classed as necessary, but if a feature is removed for any other reason - and I put “code cleanliness” and “code purity” in this category - then the BC break will create more problems than it solves.
By breaking BC and passing a huge refactoring exercise onto the user community the core developers are effectively saying that they don’t care how much grief they pass on to their customers. No other industry, or indeed other sectors in our own industry, would tolerate such a faux pas in customer relations, so why is it wrong for me to complain about the arrogant, autocratic and dictatorial attitude of the current batch of core developers? I am a customer and I have the right to complain at what I regard as poor service.
It may be the minority is those forums which are regularly patrolled by the paradigm police who instantly jump on any dissenting post, but what about the silent majority who don’t read those forums? These are the people who will end up by voting with their feet by not adopting the new release - just like those who cannot move forward from version 5.2 - simply because it breaks their existing applications.