Re: Thread-Safe DOM // was Re: do not deprecate synchronous XMLHttpRequest

On 2/11/15 9:45 PM, Marc Fawzi wrote:
> this "backward compatibility" stuff is making me think that the web is
> built upon the axiom that we will never start over and we must keep
> piling up new features and principles on top of the old ones

Pretty much, yep.

> this has worked so far, miraculously and not without overhead, but I can
> only assume that it's at the cost of growing complexity in the browser
> codebase.

To some extent, yes.

Browsers have obviously been doing refactoring and simplification as 
they go, but I think it's pretty clear that a minimal viable browser 
today is a lot more complicated than one 10 years ago.

> I'm sure you have to manage a ton of code that has to do with
> old features and old ideas...

Sometimes.  Sometimes it can just be expressed easily in terms of the 
newer stuff.  And sometimes we do manage to remove things -- I'm seeing 
it happen right now with plugins, which definitely fall in the bucket of 
a ton of annoying-to-maintain code.

> how long can this be sustained? forever?

If we're lucky, yes.

> what is the point in time where
> the business of retaining backward compatibility becomes a huge nightmare?

About 10-15 years ago, really.  We've just gotten pretty good at facing 
the nightmare.  ;)

-Boris

Received on Thursday, 12 February 2015 03:14:17 UTC