Phobos - breaking existing code

[Kapps via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 28 November 2014 at 23:33:54 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> Just for fun, I've decided to try and get MicroEmacs in D added 
> to the dub registry. The last time it compiled was 2 years ago.
>
> I wound up with at least a dozen references to Phobos names 
> that have disappeared. No corrective action was indicated, just 
> "undefined symbol". I have to go refigure out what the code was 
> trying to do, and go poking through the Phobos documentation to 
> see what will work today.
>
> I know there's been a lot of "break my code" advocacy lately, 
> but this code was only 2 years old.
>
> I fully understand how unfriendly this is to users and how 
> discouraging it can be to have their recently working code 
> shattered and scattered. We need to do a lot better.

Why are deprecated aliases even removed in the first place? Is 
there any harm in keeping them for 5+ years (undocumented of 
course)? There isn't any increased complexity for the user, you 
can completely ignore them during development, and if needed they 
could just go to the bottom of the scope/file hidden away from 
the rest of the code.