[erlang-questions] Was Re: Bug ?! now Erlang comment (LONG LONG)

[kostis@REDACTED]

   [Apologies, my first mail somehow ended up corrupt in the list.]

Dominic Williams wrote:
> 
> However, I do find that backward compatibility is too often
> offered as a reason not to make some changes, particularly
> of the kind that correct past mistakes. As a result, Erlang
> is growing, but not cleaned up.
> 
> I think the solution is to offer, along with the changes,
> refactoring tools to bring existing code up to date.

I very much agree with the comments of Dominic.

In the (not so distant) past, I've seen a certain reluctance to clean up
Erlang and I was never particularly convinced by the arguments which
were offered to explain this reluctance.

Even changes that are totally safe and in no way do not break backwards
compatibility (e.g. the compiler warn about unused variables) or fix
things that are obviously wrong (e.g. the compiler test that proper 
records are used: see +strict_record_tests) take really long time before 
they are made default.  There is still no option to disallow two-tuples 
as funs...

I can continue, but it would be more interesting to also read some
arguments from users who are pro maintaining backwards compatibility.

Kostis