[lug] Running a mixed Python environment

[Davide Del Vento]

>
> It's a lot like those signs in neighborhoods: Drive 25, it won't kill ya.
> People just think their immediate problem (getting from point A to point B)
> is so important that they get tunnel vision, and ignore things that are
> often more important, like a child's life.
>

FWIW, as a Physicist I can't avoid calculating how much time is saved going
30 or 35 vs going 20 or 25. It's mere seconds for any reasonably sized
'hood. On the other hand, the energy involved in an impact goes with the
square of the speed, so the potential damage in an impact is easily twice
or three times as much (assuming the reaction time, become faster with
speed, which it doesn't so it's even worse). Hence, it's tunnel vision plus
ignorance that cause this problem.


> Backwards compatibility is similar: I'm going to remove this function,
> because it bugs me to have to update it and this other function. I just
> broke backwards compatibility, and probably ruined the days of many other
> people. It's not a child's life, but it's the same effect: tunnel vision.
>

As I wrote, I agree that there is this attitude on doing change "for the
sake of change" as I call it. Because new is shiny, and old is rusty,
regardless if it works or not. So we do agree on this one too.

Still, I think you must be a much better coder and have worked with much
better team(s) than average, because even with the right attitude of
valuing backward compatibility very high, I believe it is very hard to
achieve for a complex system. That some people or companies (e.g. Google)
don't even try, that's another story. Yegge agrees it is difficult (or at
least tedious and expensive), so it's not just me and the teams I worked
with that are incompetent 🙂
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