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> As far as backwards compatibility, worshipping at the thrown of backwards compatibility is one reason that Windows is the shit show it is.

Not entirely, there are other reasons too

But we should respect semantic versioning. Python is a dreadful sinner in that respect.

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Semantic versioning is an illusion. It's a human-managed attempt to convey things about the surfaces and behaviors of software systems. Best case, it isn't completely misleading and a waster of everyone's time.

There is no perfection here, but the correct way to reason about this is to have schema-based systems where the surfaces and state machines are in high level representations and changes can be analyzed automatically without some human bumping the numbers.

> Best case, it isn't completely misleading and a waster of everyone's time

You mean best case it is useful

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