D's tail

[Dukc]

On Tuesday, 10 August 2021 at 00:53:29 UTC, Brian Tiffin wrote:
> How long do you expect your D programs to last?

Normally the programs use the standard library and/or DUB 
libraries. In that usual case, it in my experience takes around 
an year or so for code to stop compiling. However, it's almost 
always easy to migrate - just find-replace a library function 
call, add an `alias` for it, or stuff like that.

If you copy-paste the library code instead, or don't use it, your 
code will usually keep compiling for multiple years. DMD is a 
good example - it may well compile with 20 minors older version 
of itself.

But all in all, in D one has to be prepared to use older compiler 
versions if updating old code is not possible or worth the 
effort. On the other hand, I think one should always be prepared 
to do so in any language. Even in standartised languages, it does 
happen that the code accidently uses non-standard features or the 
new compiler versions include regressions.