Breaking Changes

Welcome back to Break, a Fallthrough aftershow! It's just Kris and Steve for this one! After brief reflections on the Gastown discussion, the episode pivots into a deep dive on semantic versioning, breaking changes, and the history of package management. Kris shares research showing most Go modules change far less code between major versions than people assume. They trace the history from CPAN and dpkg through NPM/Yarn to Go's GOPATH era, discuss supply chain security implications of MVS, and Kris teases an alternative Go toolchain project for 2026.

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Thanks for tuning in and happy listening!

Chapters:

• Prologue (00:00:00)
• Chapter 1: Reflecting on the Main Episode (00:00:17)
• Chapter 2: Data Centers, Technology & the Butlerian Jihad (00:01:22)
• Chapter 3: Semantic Versioning & Breaking Changes in Go (00:02:42)
• Chapter 4: Breaking Changes Across Language Ecosystems (00:05:04)
• Chapter 5: History of Package Managers (00:08:48)
• Chapter 6: OS vs Language Package Managers (00:11:30)
• Chapter 7: NPM, Yarn & Lock Files (00:13:08)
• Chapter 8: Go's GOPATH Era & Dependency Freedom (00:14:43)
• Chapter 9: Rethinking Dependency Management (00:16:37)
• Chapter 10: Alternative Go Toolchain (00:19:53)
• Epilogue (00:21:23)

Hosts

• Kris Brandow - Host
• Steve Klabnik - Guest

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