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0 pointsuserbinator2y ago0 comments

That's a lot of money and time to spend on supporting someone else's bug-riddled software.

Consider that it's money and time that MS spent to get into their position today. They built their empire on "back-compat is king", and betraying that principle gives far less reason for their customers to continue using their software instead of moving to alternatives.

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Kwpolska2y ago

Microsoft cares about backwards compatibility and does a good job at it IMO, especially compared to their competitors. The thing that broke was not a public API, but an internal, undocumented, unexported function in Explorer. Microsoft did patch API abuse in the past for prominent software, but they can't be expected to do it forever and for all software.

JohnFen2y ago

> Microsoft cares about backwards compatibility and does a good job at it

Indeed. This is one of the few points that I give high marks to Microsoft for, and when it comes to Windows, is the only thing that makes me feel sympathy for Microsoft devs.

Pulling off the level of backward compatibility that Windows has maintained for so long is an incredible accomplishment.

twoodfin2y ago

Software didn’t have to be that prominent to warrant a compatibility hack in Windows.

When I was exposed to the “shim” database in the XP era, it had thousands of entries.

justin662y ago

I'm not sure if you're holding up the XP list as being better than the list today, but I bet even the list at that time did not include every random shell extension imaginable.

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bombcar2y ago

They were the scrappy underdog then, they're the big dog now.

At least Apple straight up tells you "we support for about 3 years, then you're boned".

StressedDev2y ago

Apple supports its major products for more than 3 years. You typically get 6-8 years of support for an iPhone, iPad, and probably Mac.

Also, Microsoft supports each Windows version for about 10 years.

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