Ted,

I basically disagree 100% with everything you wrote. I will not got into much 
details, but for me, technology that doesn’t evolve is dead technology.

Moreover, your main argument about large code bases, is not a good one: we now 
have migration tools that work quite well. They could be made even better, with 
some investment, that most (I think) would rather see invested in the leading 
edge.

Aversion to change is everywhere. It’s deeply engrained in us human beings. 
That’s why consultant make a living selling change management. I have seen 
people complain a lot about Apple releasing new versions of iOS for example. I 
have seen developers complain that Apple releases new versions of Xcode too 
frequently. I was even not too long ago in a position to do a web development 
job for a customer who wanted to support Internet Explorer 6. I have very 
little sympathy for such plights.

If you don’t want to maintain your Swift 2 code, don’t. But don’t prevent the 
rest of us from doing it, despite the efforts required.

I applaud the way the Swift team is handling those breaking changes, piling 
them up as early as possible, postponing additive changes to post 3.0. This is 
the way to minimise the efforts as much as possible. I hope that even then, 
source-breaking changes will continue to happen when they make sense. I am 
looking forward to a language that will get constantly better at enabling me to 
evolve my code in the most productive way. If my source code breaks, that is a 
very small price to pay.

Jean-Denis

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