On Wed, Sep 04, 2013 at 08:38:04AM +0200, Marcus Denker wrote: > > Why do you need to support Squeak 3.8? This is how many years old? > > I really do not understand this idea to be compatible to all old versions > ever. >
I do not think that there is any right or wrong answer to this, it is perhaps a matter of personal perspective. For me, much of my professional experience is related to supporting manufacturing operations for a large commercial company. In this environment, the ability to engineer solutions to new problems without disrupting existing operations is critical. To me, a failure related to software changes is not just a red mark on a unit test, it is a significant emotional event if I cause a manufacturing plant to stop production (thankfully this has rarely happened in my career so far, knock wood). So maybe this makes me "conservative", but from my point of view the ability to deliver future versions of software that work without breaking older versions is a matter of good engineering discipline, and I stand by that as a matter of principle. Dave
