I particularly love your followup: twitter.com/lorenc_dan/status/120929025…

I'll be honest: "Major versions track how many times you've gotten the API wrong" really does strike me as a very true statement. I think it's an excellent take. In my own projects I try really hard to avoid major version bumps. When I have to do them I feel bad about it - because I know that it means anyone using my libraries will have to think a lot harder about how they upgrade. You're not alone in disagreeing with me on this. I had a big back-and-forth about with a senior Apache Software Foundation contributor on Twitter this morning: twitter.com/myrleKrantz/status/14240065… I'm not saying major version bumps should be avoided at all costs - but they should be avoided at /some/ costs. We should aspire to design our APIs well enough that we don't have to later break them and force our users to upgrade. That's clearly impossible to always hold to, which is why we have major version bumps - but major version bumps should be rare and apologetic, not careless and frequent.

If you want to start a conversation about something and maybe help grow people's understanding of it, using pithy, semi-comedic statements is a great way to do it. Will's original "FAILS.FEATURES.BUGS" tweet, twitter.com/willmcgugan/status/14236786… has been retweeted 256 times and got 855 likes. I included "major version bumps should be rare and apologetic, not careless and frequent" in this tweet: twitter.com/simonw/status/1424050624388… - and it got 1 retweet and 12 likes. I don't think this discussion was patronizing. I think that Will helped a lot of people understand a concept that they may have missed. Fundamentally our disagreement here seems to be about whether "major version numbers are [...] a permanent reminder of how many times you got the API wrong" means the same thing as "major version bumps should be rare and apologetic". I think the first is a slight exaggeration of the second, made for impact - and that the response to it showed that exaggerating it had the desired effect.

Hah! I had something similar awhile ago: twitter.com/lorenc_dan/status/120928979…

> If you want to start a conversation about something and maybe help grow people's understanding of it, using pithy, semi-comedic statements is a great way to do it. I've said in maybe 20 different ways how this isn't pithy or semi-comedic > I included "major version bumps should be rare and apologetic, not careless and frequent" in this tweet: twitter.com/simonw/status/1424050624388… - and it got 1 retweet and 12 likes. You've made my point splendidly. Do you remember how this thread started? With me saying the gray area doesn't get you engagement? How people pretend to be backing the extreme takes because of that? Now lo and behold, "oh well obviously they never held that view in the first place, it was just pithy and semi-comedic" > I don't think this discussion was patronizing. I think that Will helped a lot of people understand a concept that they may have missed. You acting like the catalyst for the conversation was a "pithy semi-comedic" way of saying "major version bumps should be rare and apologetic, not careless and frequent" is extremely patronizing. It's an insult to people's intelligence! It wasn't, it was doing exactly what I said above. Saying something whacky and wrong so that when people start to engage with it you can come back with a much more moderate vanilla point that's no one disagreed with in the first place so that audience the first statement collected gets to see you make . > Fundamentally our disagreement here seems to be about whether "major version numbers are [...] a permanent reminder of how many times you got the API wrong" means the same thing as "major version bumps should be rare and apologetic". I think the first is a slight exaggeration of the second, made for impact - and that the response to it showed that exaggerating it had the desired effect. They are literally tangential statements. One literally does not follow the other. That's why I said before, this isn't some academic "well achtually technically they use different words" type of deal, they are not the same! But you know what, hey maybe I should assume positive intent. Maybe you actually don't realize how non-sensical it sounds to pretend that one follows the other. So let's leave it at that.