[OT] Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy is Killing You

[FeepingCreature]

On Monday, 17 August 2020 at 11:16:00 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> This is basically what happens to C++. Adding new things, never 
> remove the old. The old will always be around. I'm sure there 
> still new code being written that uses old style C++. The 
> biggest advantage and disadvantage with C++ is the C source 
> level compatibility.
>
> Perhaps something like editions in Rust. For D, that would be 
> something like supporting D2 and adding new non-breaking things 
> to it. At the same time developing D3 which gets the new 
> non-breaking things and possibly breaking changes as well. Both 
> editions working side by side in the same application. But it's 
> the same problem as always, we don't have the manpower.

Personally I much prefer the current approach where we can sort 
of take deprecations on a nice smooth gradient. With a hard D2/D3 
cut it would be difficult to know when to make the jump, and old 
code that wasn't worth switching to D3 would eventually fall off 
the update bandwagon. I think the current approach of "opt in 
flag new feature, deprecate old feature, fallback flag old 
feature, old feature removed" is a good one.

I'm in favor of killing old code. Google and MS can afford to 
carry deprecations because they can literally throw hundreds of 
people at it. (And make no mistake - it costs them.) D should 
focus on being the best language it can be in each moment. I 
think our reaction to this should much rather take the form of 
cautiously weighing new features against their maintenance cost 
than worrying about whether or not D should deprecate old ones. 
Worstcase, you get old features that linger and look usable 
despite nobody being willing to maintain them or being actively 
discouraged from maintaining them, cough std.json cough.