Compatibility Guide for workshoppers

[martinheidegger]

In response to workshopper/learnyounode#503 and thanks to @3desprit 's question, this PR adds a compatibility guide that should help maintainers of workshoppers to figure out what version to support.

I would love to hear the input of @sethvincent @denysdovhan (due to their awesome work on javascripting that might support this policy), @rvagg (as Node TSC member and initator of workshoppers) @hackygolucky (as Node.js education manager), @jpwesselink (as contact at NodeSchool) and @ashleygwilliams (as contact at Node together) since this policy might shape the way how to communicate the use of Node at various events.

[jpwesselink]

Narrowing the range of Node versions to support will hopefully make the lifes of maintainers easier. I think this policy is very clear, and easy to validate for workshopper maintainers, NodeSchool organizers and NodeSchool students.

[rvagg]

A couple of notes:

• Official Node supported platforms is @ https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/8922/files, will be @ https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/BUILDING.md#supported-platforms very soon
• The list will vary from version to version for Node, I think Node 4 might be different from 6+ but I can't recall at this moment what that change is exactly.
• That list of supported platforms is kind of large and probably not worth enforcing on workshoppers, perhaps we be explicit and narrow it down to Windows, Linux and macOS for the versions supported upstream by Node.
• Non-LTS versions of Node are a bit tricky to spec here, my understanding is that most NodeSchool events have moved to encouraging people to install LTS versions of Node but I may well be way out of touch. Supporting non-LTS for longer than upstream supports it is quite an ask too, perhaps we only say 6 months of non-LTS if anything? Also worth pointing to https://github.com/nodejs/LTS/ for the support table.

[martinheidegger]

@rvagg Thank you for your input (I am learning every day).

• The supported platform list is indeed imposing. I updated the PR with 09ab911 to include only popular Desktop OS's.
• With my formulation of LTS/Stable I wanted to somehow exclude possible bugfixes on minor or old branches that are releases. For example: If I would write "all releases of Node in the last year" then that might include bugfix releases of 0.12 (havn't checked) and I wanted to avoid that complexity. Do you know a better formulation of this?
• In the events I attended I used to say something like "Use LTS for your projects and Stable to learn", so people installed Stable at the events.

[martinheidegger]

cc @denysdovhan

[denysdovhan]

Personally, I believe that for personal needs we have to use latest version of Node.js on our machines. And we need to force moving of new ecmascript features. Moreover, Node.js 4 will be out of active LTS soon.

That's just my personal opinion and that's why I updated my learnyoubash workshopper. In case with how-to-markdwon (which is a core-workshopper) it will support Node.js 4 as long as it's needed.

[martinheidegger]

@denysdovhan How would you phrase it?

[denysdovhan]

@martinheidegger phrase what? Didn't understand you.

[martinheidegger]

@denysdovhan How would you phrase "a compatibility guide that should help maintainers of workshoppers to figure out what version to support."

[denysdovhan]

@martinheidegger the sentences from this PR look good for creators of workshoppers.

[martinheidegger]

Merging this PR for now. Please submit follow-ups if you find ways to improve the wording. Thx ^_^