Hacker News Reader

> Andrew Gerrand: The lack of versioning built into the Go tool incentivizes library authors to provide good, stable APIs.

It certainly encourages stable APIs, but I don't see how making it very painful to iterate on your API is a strategy for good ones. My experience is that doing anything well requires the ability to gather and respond to feedback. If you can't iterate, then you're doomed to be stuck at 0.0.1 levels of quality.

View on HN

So, do you consider the Go1 compatibility guarantee to be a mistake? Most suggested stdlib or lang improvements are DOA for the time being as a result, which is annoying, but of course so too would be frequent breakages. I'm curious about your take, since you have some relevant experience.

> So, do you consider the Go1 compatibility guarantee to be a mistake?

No, I think a language basically has to declare that level of compatibility for a major version. The important part is to get as much real-world feedback and iteration in as possible before you bang the 1.0 gong.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com