I think this is an inherent problem with dynamically typed languages. There are no reliable refactoring tools so even the slightest non compatible change can be lurking anywhere for years. And with things like meta programming, monkey patching and relying on private members, even changes that are supposed to be backwards compatible might end up to not be.
Re:Why I'm Making Python 2.8
by AnonymousPlanet on Sunday December 11, 2016 @03:56AM
(#13150234)
Try to move with half a million LoC of dynamically typed code with a handful of developers with not a single update breaking for any customer and I will be impressed.
> If moving to a 2010 version of your programming language is slow and tedious you're doing something very wrong.
You mean like, dealing with strings and Unicode? That's usually the case why people have trouble migrating to Python 3.
In the Java world (conservative and slow-moving) JRE 7 (2011) is considered the absolute minimum, and if you're not targeting JRE 8 (2014) you have to have a very good reason.