4 ms·
It's the unfortunate reality of software, but it's not an immutable law. The Microsoft example is important. I've never been a fan, but I stand in grudging res
by wwweston 4y ago
It's the unfortunate reality of software, but it's not an immutable law.
The Microsoft example is important. I've never been a fan, but I stand in grudging respect for what they've accomplished with their products as far as backwards compatibility goes, which has significant and enduring value.
Emulators are another example of how software can be long-lived with the right attention.
Personally, I think we have operating environment conceptions all wrong. We continually pay for or fête new versions and thus incentivize change for change's sake. We might do better to respect or even pay for continuing compatibility.
- tomcam 4y ago> The Microsoft example is important. I've never been a fan, but I stand in grudging respect for what they've accomplished with their products as far as backwards compatibility goes, I was a PM for Visual Basic back in the day. A huge amount of work was done within dev and Office to work around problems with Adobe, Borland, etc. so that compat wasn't broken. It was frustrating and heartening.
- bombcar 4y agoIt is incredibly sad that many/most games that were released for Mac or Linux more than about 4 years ago will run better in an emulated windows environment on those platforms than they will natively (if they run at all).
- needle0 4y agoI think Windows' focus on backwards compatibility is part of what made it the default gaming platform on personal computers. Macs will never be a serious platform for gaming, even if they begin offering more performance, as long as they keep their obsession with wiping the slate clean and throwing developers off every 5-10 years or so. (I mean... 680x0, PowerPC, Mac OS X, x86, 64-bit-only, Apple Silicon, just how many breaking transitions do they have to go through?)