Breaking backwards compatiblity

[deadalnix]

Le 11/03/2012 23:12, Walter Bright a écrit :
> On 3/11/2012 2:51 PM, bearophile wrote:
>>> And sometimes, a name change can be a huge win - the
>>> invariant=>immutable
>>> one is an example. But I think that's an exceptional case, not a rule.
>>
>> I was among the ones that have asked for that name change. But
>> "immutable" is
>> a quite long word. Now I think the "val" used by Scala is better, it uses
>> less space for something I use often enough. "imm" is another option,
>> but it
>> looks less nice :-)
>
> The reason we went with "immutable" is for any other name, I'd be
> constantly explaining:
>
> "xyzzy" means immutable
>
> And I did just that for "invariant". Over and over and over. People
> immediately get what "immutable" means, like for no other name. So
> consider "immutable" a labor saving device for me.

We have the same phenomena with dur and return type type qualifier (ie: 
why does const int* fun() isn't compiling ? Because const is qualifying 
the function, not the return type).

Both are recurring questions and so should be as important as immutable. 
But both are major breaking change.