Re: Improve `seed->random-state' in stable-2.0?

[Andy Wingo]

On Mon 23 Jan 2012 14:06, Mike Gran <address@hidden> writes:

>> From: Andy Wingo <address@hidden>
>>> (seed->random-state (current-time)) seems to be a common idiom that
>>> you would end up breaking.
>>
>>This is a common idiom that is worth deprecating.  Mark's new functions
>>that seed the random state from /dev/urandom are much better.
>  
> Are you suggesting that you'll break the API in the hope that when people's
> code stops working, they'll reread the manual and notice that
> random-state-from-platform exists?
>  
> It seems a rather unfriendly way to accomplish that task.

That would indeed be a mean thing to do!  It's not what I'm suggesting
though.  Deprecation means causing Guile to emit warnings, at
compile-time or at runtime, indicating that a particular interface will
go away at some point, and noting the interface that should be used
instead.

I think it's fairly helpful, actually, but if you have any suggestions
for how it could be improved, they are much welcome.

Regards,

Andy
-- 
http://wingolog.org/