Russel Winder wrote:
I guess the prime example here is Fortran -- they end up not being
allowed to deprecate anything, let along remove it from the language.
It never ceases to amaze me that the committee manages to evolve the
language and yet still be able to compile all the 1960s legacy code that
everyone colludes in finding no-one willing to rewrite. This is not a
negative comment on the Fortran language evolution people, exactly the
opposite, but it is an indictment of a society that chooses to insist
that old code that works not be rewritten even though hardware has moved
on significantly making the code significantly past its use-by date.
On the other hand, even small incompatibilities moving from D1 to D2 create
problems for people. Fortran's longevity may be in part attributable to its
perfect legacy compatibility. After all, if you're going to force a rewrite of
the old code, one might as well move to a more modern language.
