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by pjmlp 248 days ago
.NET Framework => .NET

While C#, F#, VB and C++/CLI were kept compatible, it doesn't help when the library stuff you want to call isnt' there any longer.

C++ removal of exception specifiers, GC API,

C VLAs got dropped in C11, function prototypes changed meaning in C23, and K&R declarations were dropped from the standard.

Java, already someone else mentioned.

D, the whole D1 => D2 transition, and Tango vs Phobos drama.
3 comments
aw1621107 248 days ago
> GC API,

Bit of a quibble but I'm not sure I'd call that a "huge breaking change" given that that feature wasn't really implemented in the first place, let alone actually used.

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pjmlp 248 days ago
It could have been implemented privately by someone, but yeah I kind of agree.

https://cppreference.com/w/cpp/compiler_support/11.html

It was a bad feature, as the two main C++ commercial products that make use of GC, namely C++/CLI and Unreal C++, were never taken into account while designing it, a good example how WG21 often does PDF driven design.

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lelanthran 247 days ago
> C VLAs got dropped in C11, function prototypes changed meaning in C23, and K&R declarations were dropped from the standard.

Not so sure I'd call these huge breaking changes. They're breaking, sure, but I'd expect them to be trivial to fix in any existing codebase.

Maybe VLAs are a huge breaking change? Most code never used it due to no way at all to use them safely, so while it is a pain to replace all occurrences of them, the number of usages should be really low.

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pjmlp 247 days ago
It was breaking enough for the Linux kernel, and the money Google sponsored to the effort remove them,

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Kills-The-VLA

Breaking changes are breaking changes, even if it is only fixing a comma, someone has to spend part of their time making it compile again, which many times maps to actual money for people working at a company, their salary mapped into hours.

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lelanthran 247 days ago
> Breaking changes are breaking changes,

No disagreement there, but the context ITT was specifically about huge breaking changes. I consider those breaking changes, but not necessarily huge ones.

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hinkley 247 days ago
I recall a lot of grumbling about VB.Net. I think most of us are happy never to hear people bitch about VB again. .Net was feared to be a bait and switch to get people off of it and that definitely seems to have been the case.
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