[137] in java-interest
Re: Premature freezing of designs?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jeremy Fitzhardinge)
Mon May 29 17:28:05 1995
From: jeremy@sour.sw.oz.au (Jeremy Fitzhardinge)
Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 15:00:54 +1000 (EST)
To: java-interest@java.Eng.Sun.COM
Arthur van Hoff:
> I feel exactly the same way. However, stability of the language and
> its interfaces is also desirable. Based on user feedback we are
> willing to make upward compatible changes but we have to be careful
> that we don't change too much. Systems that eveolve quickly and that
> are not upward compatible between releases are not likely to become
> very successful. One of the reasons that X windows is so successful
> is that it has changed so little over time.
The nice thing about Java is you can change the language and keep
compatability for the compiled class files. If there were some
syntactic change, like a new string concat operator, it would not
affect any existing compiled code, and would be reasonably easy
(if perhaps a bother) to convert existing new source, so long as
the compiler is helpful.
The X API has changed over time (a small amount), but the protocol
has been very stable.
J
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