I might be misunderstanding your comment, but I have encountered source code that is not forward compatible in java. Some examples below... Incompatibilities b

I might be misunderstanding your comment, but I have encountered source code that is not forward compatible in java. Some examples below... Incompatibilities between JDK 7 and JDK 6: https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/compatibility-417013.html#jdk7 https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/compatibility... Incompatibilities between JDK 8 and JDK 7: https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/8-compatibility-guide-2156366.html#A999387 https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/8-compatibili... An exerpt from the Compatibility Guide for JDK 8 [1]: >In general, the source compatibility policy is to avoid introducing source code incompatibilities. However, implementation of some Java SE 8 features required changes that could cause code that compiled with Java SE 7 to fail to compile with Java SE 8. See Incompatibilities between Java SE 8 and Java SE 7 and Incompatibilities between JDK 8 and JDK 7 for information. There are also a plethora of deprecated and removed APIs throughout Java's history. [1]:https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/8-compatibility-guide-2156366.html#A999097 https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/8-compatibili...