Refactoring is your friend / moving from 6.x to 9.x

[Richard Gaskin]

Read through this whole thread, optimistic that I'd find the list of 
things that differentiate v6 and v9 so we can hone in on actual solutions.

I learned two things:

  - lock/unlock changed

  - It's apparently easier to write a thousands of words philosophizing
    about how a small team of C++ programmers should provide a uniform
    scripting interface for a nearly unprecedented number of OSes,
    stay on top of ongoing API changes in every one of those OSes,
    multiply features, fix bugs, incorporate Unicode, maintain or improve
    all aspects of performance, and keep the joint running than it is to
    even briefly summarize concerns about any of the above.

Is there an actual list of concrete concerns here that the team may be 
able to take action on or at least explain how/why the change exists, or 
did I just spend an hour reading that I'll never get back?

I feel rickrolled.


I've worked with too many people moving from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8, or 
Python 2 to 3, or any version of Apple's C headers in the '90s that 
broke declarations quarterly, or HyperCard 2 to 3, to get too 
out-of-breath about undoing workarounds in old code to work 
with-the-grain for v9's enhancements and fixes for long-standing 
anomalies.  When I describe LC's high priority for backward 
compatibility to nearly any other experienced dev I know, they look at 
me like I'm high and spouting tales of dancing ponies; many professional 
development systems consider backward compatibility a very minor 
nice-to-have, if they devote time to it at all. Many of us here buy 
computers from a hardware vendor with a similar view.

As for performance, in threads with Geoff Canyon, Mark Talutto, and 
others who provided real-world use cases and metrics, we do see some 
performance degradation in v9 from v6 in some cases, a surprising amount 
on par given how relatively little work v6 had to do under the hood with 
encodings and types, a few things a wee bit faster, and overall such a 
strong comeback from the v7 series that it should be clear to those 
earnestly following along that the team has indeed been quite evidently 
working on performance, and delivering improvements over the v9 cycle.

Then again, my work may not touch the items on the concern list.  I 
can't know, because I couldn't find such a list in this long thread.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com