Clojure and Pull Request Controversy

[Dukc]

On Friday, 30 November 2018 at 19:08:28 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer 
wrote:
> For low-level code, you need to pick autodecoding or not 
> autodecoding, and we need a deprecation period, Like Nick 
> suggested. This means that for a period of time, a string won't 
> be a range(!).

If that's what he intended, better. Libraries still need to 
adapt, but at least won't become incompatible with each other 
overnight.

>
> But painful, it will be. However, mostly for low-level code 
> (i.e. code that uses string.front and string.popFront). May 
> want low-level code conveniences too (frontCodeUnit, 
> frontCodePoint?)

I think it's not only low-level code. When I'm just coding away 
some user input handling, I don't always bother to add 
.byCodeUnit everywhere. For many, including me, the change will 
be mainly a good thing, since there will be no accidental 
decoding anymore -I'll happily migrate. But there are, without 
doubt, codebases in production that have thousands of lines full 
of auto-decoding, maintained by people who hardly time to update.

> We will see how bad it is, once it's tried. I'm hoping not very 
> bad.

The good news is, I think, that we can try this without knowing 
in advance whether it can be done. We can deprectate 
autodecoding, but if it proves to be too tough to adapt, we 
simply won't remove it after the period. Of course, we should say 
in advance that we're only considering removing it, otherwise we 
might scare some users away.