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The Babel Podcast

04: Fred Schott on Breaking Changes

> What is a breaking change about anyway?

Fred Schott (@FredKSchott) joins Henry to have a discussion around the topic of breaking changes in programming. We chat about Snowpack and Babel's major versions, different vision means a new name (Rome), semver, RFCs, BDFLs, breaking changes as bug fixes, forking, and more (recorded in April)! Transcript at https://podcast.babeljs.io/breaking

Headings:

  • Intro: What is a Breaking Change?
  • What is Snowpack: V1 to V2
  • When is a Breaking Change Just a New Package?
  • Re-Defining Semver?
  • Famous Coder, Bruce Lee
  • Commit: "fix stuff"
  • On RFCs
  • Project Vision: BDFLs and more
  • On Removing Babel's TC39 Stage Presets
  • Communicating Breaking Changes: React, Yarn, etc
  • Are the Changes We Make Even Helpful?
  • Different Vision, Different Name
  • React 17, Babel 8?
  • Rationalizing Breaking Changes as Bug Fixes
  • Breaking Changes and Plugin Ecosystem
  • Reverse Transforms for All Proposals
  • Project Sustainability and Sponsorship
  • Streaming Coding
  • The Difficulty of Reaching Out
  • Scaling Your Time, Managing Your Attention
  • The Freedom of Contributors To Join and Leave
  • The Value of Forking
  • Platform Funding, Sponsorship
  • "Babel Pika Fellowship"

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