Comment by fngjdflmdflg
3 months ago
I kind of agree that little used,[0] non-web-like features is fair to be considered for removal. However I wish they didn't hide behind security vulnerabilities as the reason as that clearly wasn't it. The author didn't even bother to look if a memory safe package existed. "We're removing this for your own good" is the worst way to go about it but he still doubles down on this idea later in the thread.
[0] ~0.001% usage according to one post there
> [0] ~0.001% usage according to one post there
This is still a massive number of people who are going to be affected by this.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44938747
I get what you're saying, but following this line of reasoning would mean that successful, wide-spread specifications, standards, and technologies must never drop any features. They would only ever accumulate new features, bloating to the point of uselessness, and die under the weight of their own success.
> must never drop any features
On the web? That's about right. See Google's own document on this: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RC-pBBvsazYfCNNUSkPqAVpS...
Nonsense. Following this line of reasoning is that putting percentages on billions is intellectually dishonest: You don't have to go any further than that. It is perhaps out of ignorance (now you know), but if you try to make it about anything else, that's just arguing in bad-faith.
Of course you can drop features, but if you work at Google I think you can pick something else, and you'll have a hard time convincing anyone that XSLT which was in Chrome back when it was fast, is why Chrome isn't fast anymore. And if you don't work at Google, why do you care? You've learned something new today. Enjoy.
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It’s classic Google behaviour: “oh not used by a billion people? Didn’t get popular enough, axe it”.
They arguably became a victim of their own scale.