Stroustrup's talk on C++0x

[Jari-Matti Mäkelä]

eao197 wrote:

> On Thu, 30 Aug 2007 15:44:25 +0400, 0ffh <spam at frankhirsch.net> wrote:
> 
>> eao197 wrote:
>>> I mean changes in languages which break compatibility with previous
>>> code. AFAIK, successful languages always had some periods (usually 2-3
>>> years, sometimes more) when there were no additions to language and new
>>> major version didn't break existing code (for example: Java, C#, Ruby,
>>> Python, even C++ sometimes).
>>
>> I rather think, that a "new major version" of any language that "doesn't
>> break existing code" could hardly justify it's new major version number.
>> A complete rewrite of the compiler, e.g., would justify a majer new
>> compiler version, but not even a teeny-minor new language version.
> 
> Java 1.5 (with generics) and C# 2.0 ware major versions, but didn't break
> old code.

Oh, btw, Java 1.5 did break old code. I used to use Gentoo during the
transition phase so I had some experience compiling stuff. :) There were at
least a couple of commonly used libraries and programs that broke. One
minor problem was the new 'enum' keyword. Of course at least Sun Java
compiler allows compiling in 1.4 mode too. I think Gentoo has a common
practice nowadays to compile each Java program using the oldest compatible
compiler profile for best compatibility. IIRC there were also some
incompatible ABI changes because of the generics.