alt Hacker News> and you can basically forget about ever meaningfully refactoring that codebase.
Ummm why? Breaking changes aren't the end of the world? Deprecate and communicate clearly and people are usually fine with them (if it's meaningful progress instead of churn).
They are. Every breaking change is a pain point for your users/customers. Every time they have to do something to work around your breaking change, it's an opportunity to reconsider whether they need you or whether using your product is worth the trouble.