I mean, so what? I think in actuality what they're implying is that one shouldn't update Rust to latest, even though that's the recommendation. So it shouldn't matter what the friend does, as long as they're always on latest Rust. In fact, the friend is in the right, in this scenario.
> It might not be obvious how much effort it takes to manage bugfixes in dependencies where every few weeks there's a new breaking API change in egui/winit/wgpu, and while these probably seem extremely minor to those who spend all their time building an engine on top of said libraries, sinking a day or two in figuring things out and fixing stuff on every release is a gigantic waste of time in my view.
But not really, because the person we are talking about is, if I understand correctly, a user of the software their friend wrote, not someone who is implementing any features themselves and thus needs to rely on a stable API. All they need to do is to update their Rust version, which is really the same as any other software that must update over time.
This same sentiment is also echoed by Steve Klabnik here [0], it seems.
Can't agree because updating code to utilize new shiny features frequently impacts those who use the code because of leaky abstractions. Or even deliberate breaking API changes to accommodate said new language features.
How does it impact the user? Again, this is an application, not a library, so I really don't see how, just as using some desktop application that the developer updates should not affect the end user themselves. If this indeed were a library, then sure, I'd agree, but by my inference, it does not seem so.