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If you run into a bug specific to Windows XP in a software application, you fix it for Windows XP with a workaround specific to WinXP, then you continue support

If you run into a bug specific to Windows XP in a software application, you fix it for Windows XP with a workaround specific to WinXP, then you continue supporting it forever? I'm not seeing the difference other than you probably run into that kind of breakage more frequently with the web.

mbrubeck 13y ago
Exactly - as in the original blog post by Yossi Kreinin, I'm talking about a difference in degree only, depending on just how many levels of dependencies and abstractions you're building on top of. Your comment brings up a good point that writing portable code (cross-browser, cross-OS, across compilers, across processors, etc.) adds to the difficulty level because it requires you to target a higher-level abstraction (web standards, POSIX, ANSI C...) rather than a concrete implementation, while still dealing with implementation-specific bugs that leak through that abstraction.