7 ms·

Yeah why fix bugs when you can just enshrine the bug as a feature. Backwards compatibility like this is a mistake.

bigyikes 4y ago
What you call a “mistake” is actually just having empathy for the user. User experience is king. It’s not tech debt, it’s a feature.
- tcmb 4y ago
  I agree that it's empathy for the user, but I'd say it's a workaround, and as such it's tech debt.
  - muspimerol 4y ago
    A workaround does not necessitate tech debt. "Workaround" is a conflated term - it basically implies something works differently than one might expect, which is subjective. Anyway, what is the alternative? Saying "that's not my problem"? Users don't care about who is technically at fault, they care about a well functioning product.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      The alternative is to let it break and force developers to update their software. Doing that allowed Apple to not have to maintain 32 bit compatibility which allowed Apple to make the operating system smaller (all shared libraries have to be duplicated including in memory) and allowed Apple to completely remove 32 bit support in the later ARM processors.
      - layer8 4y ago
        …and forced me to stop using some favorite iOS apps because they didn’t get updated — in one case because the developer had died. Windows is certainly more user-friendly in that respect.
        scarface74 4y ago
        So Apple should have kept 32 bit support in the chip and processor forever? Libraries being able to consume less memory and being able to either reduce the die size or add more features is a direct consumer benefit.
        EamonnMR 4y ago
        Yes, absolutely. Memory is cheap, software is valuable, forcing everyone to churn constantly to satisfy some sort of aesthetic is a massive waste of resources.
        scarface74 4y ago
        Die space on a processor is definitely not cheap. Also memory takes energy to keep refreshed both die space and power are at a premium on mobile devices. Shouid Apple also have kept PPC support in Macs forever? 68K support? OS 9 support? Why stop there, why not ship with Apple //e 65C02 support? I’m sure I lost some valuable AppleSoft basic programs over the years.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        EamonnMR 4y ago
        I would consider that wonderful. I'm no huge Microsoft fan, but it's very nice that I can run 90s and 2000s programs on my current windows box. Though I hear we're losing Win32...
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    "Tech debt" is doing things quickly now with the price that you have to clean up (i.e. invest more time) later, hence the word "debt". This is sometimes a good trade-off, just as financial debt is. Not everything that looks a bit ugly is "tech debt". And yes, it's ugly, but reality is ugly so we have to deal with it.
- DrewADesign 4y ago
  Yeah... I've put well over 10k hours into writing FOSS and consistently encounter this attitude there, too. I never imagined we could get this far tolerating such frequent contempt for both end-users and their advocates, such as interface designers. If your PR poses even a theoretical future inconvenience to developers, good luck getting it merged, regardless of the user benefit. Until this changes, user-facing open source alternatives will always be alternatives rather than the standard.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    Boxed software Microsoft: if it breaks, then Microsoft is wrong. FOSS and new Microsoft: if it breaks, have you tried pulling the latest? Yes? Then it's a bug in your expectations.
  - baq 4y ago
    It’s easy to optimize for developer convenience when you aren’t getting paid to do the work… arguably it’s the only way non-profit open source software can progress at all on average. The tails are heavy, though.
    - hulitu 4y ago
      If you write the program for yourself, yes. Why then bother with an OSS licence ?
  - RedShift1 4y ago
    Not just devs and end users, but also devs and other devs. Not in rejecting pulls but changing API's like renaming functions, removing functions, swapping argument positions, changing the complete workflow of a library, etc... without care. The amount of breakage in the OSS world is just ridiculous. I'm probably biased because I deal with a lot of Javascript where this sort of behaviour is rampant.
    - hulitu 4y ago
      > I'm probably biased because I deal with a lot of Javascript where this sort of behaviour is rampant. It's overall. The size of libraries in a linux system [1] has grown steadily over the years wirhout bringing anything useful. The QT and GTK libraries are the perfect example of incompatibilities and bad design. [1] Slackware which did not changed much in term of offered programs over the years.
- tshaddox 4y ago
  Surely it’s both? Some technical debt can be okay just like some personal or corporate debt can be okay.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Every piece of code you write automatically becomes code you have to maintain. It’s tech debt.
yusyusyus 4y ago
software distribution had a quite different model in that era.
TakeBlaster16 4y ago
If you play a lot of SimCity on Windows 3.1, then you upgrade to Windows 95 and SimCity stops working, who are you going to blame?
- mdaniel 4y ago
  I would have more sympathy for that if Windows 95 were just suddenly dropped out of the sky to some rock music, but my experience with MSDN is that they are quite liberal with access to beta versions so software vendors can test their products before the unwashed masses get it And I say this as someone who remembers the binders full of CDROMs that arrived, so not just "download this iso" modern day conveniences
  - rictic 4y ago
    You're arguing who is truly at fault, but as a consumer with less sophistication than "MSDN Subscriber" who are you going to blame when Win95 doesn't run your favorite software?
  - drdec 4y ago
    Let's say SimCity took advantage of this beta program and fixed their buggy software. Great! Now how do you get that fixed software to every user who bought a SimCity CD or floppies? Remember, most of your users don't have a modem and there is no widespread internet infrastructure at the time of the Windows 95 release.
  - hulitu 4y ago
    MSDN ? In windows 95 ?
ysavir 4y ago
We're talking early 90s. Not only were automatic updates not a thing, manual updates were hardly thing. If Windows wanted SimCity to work on their new windows release, the only option was to make the new windows release work with SimCity, not the other way around.
- Topgamer7 4y ago
  I remember the days of burning all sorts of updates for software to cd or DVD
  - tibbetts 4y ago
    I remember the days of going down to my friends store because he had a modem and knew which BBSes would have software downloads. I had to bring my own floppy disk because those things cost money.
- nix23 4y ago
  But then why not let windows patch simcity, instead of changing the system, just asking.
  - ysavir 4y ago
    You mean, like watch for an install of SimCity, and modify the game's files? I don't have enough experience in hardware and PCs to know if that was at all possible or practical.
    - nix23 4y ago
      >like watch for an install of SimCity, and modify the game's files? Yes exactly! Technically easy, a Lawyers thing maybe?
      - Someone 4y ago
        Could also be interesting in a world where most PCs ran anti-virus tools of various different vendors. Imagine Microsoft adding a magic “we’re the good guys” handshake to their OS that would all those anti-virus tool say “go ahead and do whatever you want”.
siva7 4y ago
Nowadays yes, back then this was the more reasonable approach
thought_alarm 4y ago
A-list apps have always received special treatment. MacOS and Windows are both full of app-specific hacks to ensure that misbehaving but popular apps continue to work between system versions.
- azinman2 4y ago
  Correct. And not even always only A list.
sn_master 4y ago
It's the difference of an OS targeted exclusively (at the time) for home users vs one for academia and web servers.
dotnet00 4y ago
Back then you couldn't just bug the game developer to issue an update patch, and anything significant breaking between Windows versions affects Windows adoption and not the adoption of the software the user is actually interested in. We see the latter even today, with Windows 8 being a failure for how much it changed and broke user workflows and Windows 11 getting a decent bit of pushback too. In a way this realization is what's finally making Linux viable for gaming. Instead of expecting developers to bring compatibility and bug fixes, have the system provide it and suddenly you can even have an entire gaming console designed for PC gaming on Linux, thus also giving you enough momentum for developers to make adjustments so their game runs better on the compatibility layer.
solardev 4y ago
Those who prioritize code correctness over user experience will soon find themselves in that blessed paradise where they never have to worry about user experience anymore... because there are no more users.
scarface74 4y ago
Microsoft made most of its money back then in two ways - corporations and individuals buying Windows upgrades and bundling Windows with new computers. If Windows got a reputation for being incompatible with apps, people wouldn’t upgrade. iOS doesn’t really have that problem. New phones are always going to come with new operating systems and if your app doesn’t run on the new OS, users are going to blame the app developers. Also most of the incompatibility with apps and new operating systems comes from developers using unpublished APIs. Apple is very strict about not allowing developers to use unpublished methods [1]. [1] I refuse to use the term “private APIs”. An API is a documented method that the platform vendor documents and promises to support

What you call a “mistake” is actually just having empathy for the user. User experience is king. It’s not tech debt, it’s a feature.

tcmb 4y ago
I agree that it's empathy for the user, but I'd say it's a workaround, and as such it's tech debt.
- muspimerol 4y ago
  A workaround does not necessitate tech debt. "Workaround" is a conflated term - it basically implies something works differently than one might expect, which is subjective. Anyway, what is the alternative? Saying "that's not my problem"? Users don't care about who is technically at fault, they care about a well functioning product.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    The alternative is to let it break and force developers to update their software. Doing that allowed Apple to not have to maintain 32 bit compatibility which allowed Apple to make the operating system smaller (all shared libraries have to be duplicated including in memory) and allowed Apple to completely remove 32 bit support in the later ARM processors.
    - layer8 4y ago
      …and forced me to stop using some favorite iOS apps because they didn’t get updated — in one case because the developer had died. Windows is certainly more user-friendly in that respect.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        So Apple should have kept 32 bit support in the chip and processor forever? Libraries being able to consume less memory and being able to either reduce the die size or add more features is a direct consumer benefit.
        EamonnMR 4y ago
        Yes, absolutely. Memory is cheap, software is valuable, forcing everyone to churn constantly to satisfy some sort of aesthetic is a massive waste of resources.
        scarface74 4y ago
        Die space on a processor is definitely not cheap. Also memory takes energy to keep refreshed both die space and power are at a premium on mobile devices. Shouid Apple also have kept PPC support in Macs forever? 68K support? OS 9 support? Why stop there, why not ship with Apple //e 65C02 support? I’m sure I lost some valuable AppleSoft basic programs over the years.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        EamonnMR 4y ago
        I would consider that wonderful. I'm no huge Microsoft fan, but it's very nice that I can run 90s and 2000s programs on my current windows box. Though I hear we're losing Win32...
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  "Tech debt" is doing things quickly now with the price that you have to clean up (i.e. invest more time) later, hence the word "debt". This is sometimes a good trade-off, just as financial debt is. Not everything that looks a bit ugly is "tech debt". And yes, it's ugly, but reality is ugly so we have to deal with it.
DrewADesign 4y ago
Yeah... I've put well over 10k hours into writing FOSS and consistently encounter this attitude there, too. I never imagined we could get this far tolerating such frequent contempt for both end-users and their advocates, such as interface designers. If your PR poses even a theoretical future inconvenience to developers, good luck getting it merged, regardless of the user benefit. Until this changes, user-facing open source alternatives will always be alternatives rather than the standard.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Boxed software Microsoft: if it breaks, then Microsoft is wrong. FOSS and new Microsoft: if it breaks, have you tried pulling the latest? Yes? Then it's a bug in your expectations.
- baq 4y ago
  It’s easy to optimize for developer convenience when you aren’t getting paid to do the work… arguably it’s the only way non-profit open source software can progress at all on average. The tails are heavy, though.
  - hulitu 4y ago
    If you write the program for yourself, yes. Why then bother with an OSS licence ?
- RedShift1 4y ago
  Not just devs and end users, but also devs and other devs. Not in rejecting pulls but changing API's like renaming functions, removing functions, swapping argument positions, changing the complete workflow of a library, etc... without care. The amount of breakage in the OSS world is just ridiculous. I'm probably biased because I deal with a lot of Javascript where this sort of behaviour is rampant.
  - hulitu 4y ago
    > I'm probably biased because I deal with a lot of Javascript where this sort of behaviour is rampant. It's overall. The size of libraries in a linux system [1] has grown steadily over the years wirhout bringing anything useful. The QT and GTK libraries are the perfect example of incompatibilities and bad design. [1] Slackware which did not changed much in term of offered programs over the years.
tshaddox 4y ago
Surely it’s both? Some technical debt can be okay just like some personal or corporate debt can be okay.
scarface74 4y ago
Every piece of code you write automatically becomes code you have to maintain. It’s tech debt.

yusyusyus 4y ago

software distribution had a quite different model in that era.

TakeBlaster16 4y ago

If you play a lot of SimCity on Windows 3.1, then you upgrade to Windows 95 and SimCity stops working, who are you going to blame?

mdaniel 4y ago
I would have more sympathy for that if Windows 95 were just suddenly dropped out of the sky to some rock music, but my experience with MSDN is that they are quite liberal with access to beta versions so software vendors can test their products before the unwashed masses get it And I say this as someone who remembers the binders full of CDROMs that arrived, so not just "download this iso" modern day conveniences
- rictic 4y ago
  You're arguing who is truly at fault, but as a consumer with less sophistication than "MSDN Subscriber" who are you going to blame when Win95 doesn't run your favorite software?
- drdec 4y ago
  Let's say SimCity took advantage of this beta program and fixed their buggy software. Great! Now how do you get that fixed software to every user who bought a SimCity CD or floppies? Remember, most of your users don't have a modem and there is no widespread internet infrastructure at the time of the Windows 95 release.
- hulitu 4y ago
  MSDN ? In windows 95 ?

ysavir 4y ago

We're talking early 90s. Not only were automatic updates not a thing, manual updates were hardly thing. If Windows wanted SimCity to work on their new windows release, the only option was to make the new windows release work with SimCity, not the other way around.

Topgamer7 4y ago
I remember the days of burning all sorts of updates for software to cd or DVD
- tibbetts 4y ago
  I remember the days of going down to my friends store because he had a modem and knew which BBSes would have software downloads. I had to bring my own floppy disk because those things cost money.
nix23 4y ago
But then why not let windows patch simcity, instead of changing the system, just asking.
- ysavir 4y ago
  You mean, like watch for an install of SimCity, and modify the game's files? I don't have enough experience in hardware and PCs to know if that was at all possible or practical.
  - nix23 4y ago
    >like watch for an install of SimCity, and modify the game's files? Yes exactly! Technically easy, a Lawyers thing maybe?
    - Someone 4y ago
      Could also be interesting in a world where most PCs ran anti-virus tools of various different vendors. Imagine Microsoft adding a magic “we’re the good guys” handshake to their OS that would all those anti-virus tool say “go ahead and do whatever you want”.

siva7 4y ago

Nowadays yes, back then this was the more reasonable approach

thought_alarm 4y ago

A-list apps have always received special treatment. MacOS and Windows are both full of app-specific hacks to ensure that misbehaving but popular apps continue to work between system versions.

azinman2 4y ago
Correct. And not even always only A list.

sn_master 4y ago

It's the difference of an OS targeted exclusively (at the time) for home users vs one for academia and web servers.

dotnet00 4y ago

Back then you couldn't just bug the game developer to issue an update patch, and anything significant breaking between Windows versions affects Windows adoption and not the adoption of the software the user is actually interested in. We see the latter even today, with Windows 8 being a failure for how much it changed and broke user workflows and Windows 11 getting a decent bit of pushback too. In a way this realization is what's finally making Linux viable for gaming. Instead of expecting developers to bring compatibility and bug fixes, have the system provide it and suddenly you can even have an entire gaming console designed for PC gaming on Linux, thus also giving you enough momentum for developers to make adjustments so their game runs better on the compatibility layer.

solardev 4y ago

Those who prioritize code correctness over user experience will soon find themselves in that blessed paradise where they never have to worry about user experience anymore... because there are no more users.

scarface74 4y ago

Microsoft made most of its money back then in two ways - corporations and individuals buying Windows upgrades and bundling Windows with new computers. If Windows got a reputation for being incompatible with apps, people wouldn’t upgrade. iOS doesn’t really have that problem. New phones are always going to come with new operating systems and if your app doesn’t run on the new OS, users are going to blame the app developers. Also most of the incompatibility with apps and new operating systems comes from developers using unpublished APIs. Apple is very strict about not allowing developers to use unpublished methods [1]. [1] I refuse to use the term “private APIs”. An API is a documented method that the platform vendor documents and promises to support