Earlier quoted context omitted.
>pretty sure K&R C is a subset of ANSI C, Not so, AFAICT. For one thing, K&R function declarations looked like this: int main(argc, argv) int argc, char **argv { ... } Ever wonder where 1TBS came from? Also, in K&R, function prototypes didn't list args.
Yes, function declarations did look like that. And GCC accepts it totally silently in pedantic ANSI C mode, not even warnings: 11:44:57 cory@tizona /home/cory/Workspace/test $ cat knr.c #include main(argc, argv) int argc; char **argv; { int z = foo(3, 4); printf("foo is %d\n", z); } foo(x, y) { return x + y; } 11:44:59 cory@tizona /home/cory/Workspace/test $ gcc -std=c89 -pedantic -o knr knr.c 11:45:07 cory@tizona /h…
Chrome browser for businesses
281–282 of 282 posts
Re: Chrome browser for businesses
#282Is anyone else concerned that this means IT can choose to hold back the version of Chrome in their organizations? Auto-updating Chrome has been low key one of the best solutions to the pain of backwards compatibility with older browsers. In the past we not only had to worry about compatibility between browsers, we had to worry about compatibility between browser versions. Further, auto-updating Chrome as dramatically…
Companies have far too much internal plumbing to permit browsers to auto-update themselves. Being feature-compatible with the latest SV-poster-child website is insignificant compared to maintaining stability for the tax-management team's internal web app. I was once involved in an IE6 -> IE8 upgrade for a Fortune 100 corporation. It took nine months to analyze all the possible impacts and implement mitigations before…
That said, there's a middle-ground we should strike here. At some point, being out of date (sometimes as much as half a decade or more!) on your browser trumps the cost of keeping internal software up to date. This is not to mention the network costs of third-parties attempting to support your users browsing the public web and on browser vendors that take investment away from their latest versions to continue to support legacy software.Allowing indefinite suspension of upgrades by IT is definitively a mistake. It adds insult to injury that Google is repeating a mistake which we all learned so much about via IE and older versions of Firefox. We will all collectively pay for this if they don't course correct.
The middle ground here is providing extended support channels like what's being done for Firefox and Edge. Chrome already has Canary, Dev/Beta, and Stable channels. A slower moving, more stable channel for businesses would be a natural solution here.
This gives businesses time to test and adapt, limits the total number of versions in the wild that must be supported by browser vendors and web developers, and provides just enough paternalistic motivation to keep your internal software in a good state (upgrading to support latest browsers is a forcing function for testing, performance tuning, security tightening, etc.).