Subjectively, it increasingly feels that while the complexity has been increasing, the notion of longevity of the underlying products and services has been degr

Subjectively, it increasingly feels that while the complexity has been increasing, the notion of longevity of the underlying products and services has been degrading. While updates to software were expected, general outlook would be that they would not be breaking the core features. The emphasis on backwards compatibility was in a way an assurance to businesses that building their operations on vendor's products is not risky. Even then, some mission-critical elements would be defensively abstracted to avoid the dependency risks (at least theoretically...) Now, we all witness the "eternal-beta" paradigm across the most of the major software products. Frequent builds with automatic updates, when new features could be suddenly pushed, and old features removed. Sure, it's still possible to spec out a "hard-rock" steady platform, postpone updates, abstract dependencies and just focus on business. But...such approach won't be approved, as it's widely acknowledged that the presence of critical bugs is rather a "feature" of all software. Postponing the updates is not prudent, it's a liability. So the rock-solid expectations are just an illusion or perhaps a fantasy promoted widely, just to get the foot in the door. Ironically, the most stable elements are the so much dreaded "legacy", too often in charge of the business-critical logic.