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Home > Archive > PHP Pear > August 2004 > Re: [PEAR] can I depend on stable PEAR classes to not change?









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Author Re: [PEAR] can I depend on stable PEAR classes to not change?
Culley Harrelson

2004-08-24, 11:04 pm

>
> Sounds like you need to either write all your code yourself, or pay
> someone else
> for it. Open source code evolves, and that's where a lot of its strength comes
> from. If you can't evolve with it, then *you* are making bad choices.
>


All code evolves not just open source code. But evolving code
shouldn't mean unstable code. As a small business owner I can't
afford to risk using a library unless I'm damn sure the maintainer
isn't going to pull the API out from under me. This is partially me
being conservative but is is also good common sense. I would expect
corporate users of PEAR packages would be even more conservative than
I am-- professional use requires rock solid stability. Code libraries
should be flexible and extensible and my code shouldn't have to change
because the library I use changed. A changing API is often either a
sign of immaturity or rigidity of the underlying code-- it scares me
and makes me question the library.

I understand how things work-- sometimes an api has to change on order
to evolve and everyone agrees that breaking BC is bad. I only wrote
this response because I felt I needed to defend myself a little...
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