Outreach: Lessons, Learning, & Commentary

Content last updated: November, 2005

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Commentary / Blasphemy

Backward Compatibility

(November '05)

In case ya'll didn't know, before transmogrifying into a web geek, I was a nuclear engineer. Yep, a nuclear engineer. I did safety analysis and wrote safety analysis codes. These codes underwent RIGOROUS scrutiny and quality assurance because... they absolutely had to work correctly. Interesting, they also had to CONTINUE to work correctly, AND if a particular set of input was used to run the code in 1975 and then in 2005, both runs must give EXACTLY the same answer regardless of how many code revisions and upgrades have taken place.

Why must the two answers be identical? Well, if the answer was correct in 1975, then it darn well better STILL be correct in 2005. Otherwise, it's like saying 2+2=4 one year, and 2+2=5 the next year. This means that the code must be backward compatibile for as long as the code is used. In the case of nuclear power plants, this can be 50 years or more. Yes, I know that Microsoft and everybody else thinks all code is trash in 6 months. But in certain cases where code is put to practical use, rather than for streaming porn, it has to last a lot longer than 6 months.

Enter the Macromedia folks, who have never heard of backward compatibility. For example, when they decide a particular ColdFusion tag is doing things "wrong" or needs to be improved, the original version of the tag is retained only to the extent that it is convenient to Macromedia. Otherwise, anything is fair as far as they're concerned.

For example, going from CF4 to CF5, the CFHTTPPARAM tags were revised so URL parameters were automatically URL-Encoded. Great, but what about all of us who were already URL-encoding these things? It meant that all URL parameters were... URL-Encoded twice. So after identifying my Macromedia problem and revising the affected websites, I was out 10 hours.

So today I was playing with the CFPOP tag for the first time. Did a bunch of programming on my workstation that has CF-MX. Got everything nice and working. Then uploaded it to the server and... it broke. Why? Well gosh golly, my CF version is actually CF6 while the server has CF7, and naturally the CFPOP tag isn't backward compatible. Yes, upon inspection it appears that the new version is in fact better than the old version. HOWEVER, if I had been using the old version these past several years, suddenly a bunch of my websites would break when the server was upgraded. Then I'd have to identify the problem and fix a bunch of websites, and there I've shot another day or two simply because Macromedia is inconsiderate.

This begs the question, "How should they handle this sort of thing?" Well, what we nuclear engineers would do is we would leave the original tag alone, and add a second tag named CFPOP1. And that's all there is to it. Yes, it means there's some duplication; however, it saves lots of people lots of headaches and it means that I and the rest of the world's CF programmers can sleep soundly at night with the comfortable knowledge that because our code worked perfectly today, it will also work perfectly tomorrow.

But will Macromedia take this sort of advice? Not on your life. I've even gone so far as to "apply" for a job as head of Macromedia's QA department. However, rather than actually applying, I stated that I was NOT applying because they obviously have no interest in QA.

So why am I writing this? Well gosh golly, my hope is that these few paragraphs will thin out the web geek competition. Young web geek wanna-be's will see this, and they will think "Holy crap, no wonder nobody is doing web development anymore." Then, rather than becoming web geeks, they'll become something much less frustrating... like counselors for sexaholics addicted to streaming web porn. Then I'll have less competition, more clients, and a higher hourly rate. And I'll actually be able to thank Macromedia for all the flaming fire-pokers to my backside.

Commentary Archive

Flash MX 2004 Documentation (September '05)
ColdFusion & 127.0.0.1 on Windows XP (July '05)
ColdFusion: a History of Portable Code? (December '04)
What is Verity, Anyway? (February '03)
Cold Fusion is NOT Dead! (October '02)

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