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0 pointsWorldMaker9y ago0 comments

I'd think there are plenty of reasons to give software an air of "out-of-date"-ness. In this particular example, its a stigma to browser developers if it takes them until 2023 to implement ES2015.

It's a common thing in language standards to version by the year the standard was ratified, especially for ANSI languages such as C and C++, but there's a long history of it in language design including the ur-example off the top of my head of ALGOL68.

As for Windows 98. Would you seriously with a straight face want to admit to using a version of Windows that is old enough to vote? If anything, it's too bad they stopped that pattern with XP as it would have been a lot easier to shame people for still using Windows 2001 in 2015.

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Buttons8409y ago

MySQL still hasn't implemented "with statements" and I miss them frequently when working with MySQL. The fact that "with statements" were added to the SQL standard in 1999 doesn't seem to bother anybody though, and MySQL continues to gain popularity.

WorldMakerOP9y ago

I've been Team PostgreSQL for a long time in the FLOSS DB Wars, so take this with a grain of salt, but that MySQL hasn't managed to implement "ancient" standards certainly has bothered me over the years and there are certainly plenty of other people on Team PostgreSQL that have been pointing this stuff out for in some cases decades. So yes, shame on MySQL for failing SQL99 (and heck, shame on them for failing SQL86 in their basic [lack of] ACID compliance in their default DB storage for far too many years).

So yes, this certainly feeds my point that standards years can be useful to point out the quirky failings of software by potentially adding to their shame. It's 2016, are you using an SQL-1986-compliant database?

snuxoll9y ago

Common table expressions, not "with statements", sorry to be pedantic. Also, CTE's are awesome - I used them pretty heavily in massaging a self-referential table used to implement a hierarchy into something that doesn't piss off reporting tools (to make things worse it's a slowly changing dimension, oh the fun).

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