Windows Backwards Compatibility

It's a similar story with Windows, due to continuous backwards compatibility as demonstrated in videos such as:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH1BKPSGcxQ

Windows doesn't break backwards compatibility unless it is absolutely worse to keep it around. Think about old SMB protocol that caused security issues. The old Delphi programs continue to work since both the API design is more future-proof and Microsoft did a mind-boggling amount of work to keep ABI stable.

are you sure?for all things bad about windows, one cannot say that they didn't take backward compatibility quite seriously

Microsoft is notorious in the efforts they make to allow backward compatibility. But in this one case, they don't and are the villain? I can still run programs targeted at 16bit Microsoft Windows 3.x from 30 years ago.Apple breaks background compatibility nearly every year on their products, yet they get a pass?

Windows is pretty focused on backwards compatibility. A large portion of their market comes from the fact that the latest version of Windows can still run 10-20 year old programs written for Windows 98, XP, etc.

Backwards compatibility is why people use Windows.

The difference is, Microsoft doesn't abandon their old stuff as soon as something newer and shinier comes along. I can still write a Win32 app today, almost 30 years after NT 3.1 came out. Even more impressive, if I use an old-enough version of the compiler and stick to a functional subset of the API, the program will run on both an NT 3.1 box and a brand-new Windows 11 machine.Try that in the Apple ecosystem.

you are not understanding the issue here. we are talking about the windows API - they have supported every aspect of it in a backwards compatible way since its inception.read the Raymond Chen blog about how they used SimCity as a benchmark to test if their backwards compat was working. Marc Andreessen is even on the record as being an admirer of the Windows backwards compat work. they put a lot of work into it and placed a high value on it because they did not want to break developer trust.

It’s not baffling at all. They strongly value maintaining backwards compatibility guarantees.For example, Windows 11 has no backwards compatibility guarantees for DOS but operating systems that they do have backwards compatibility guarantees for do.Enterprises need Microsoft to maintain these for as long as possible.It is AMAZING how much inertia software has that hardware doesn’t, given how difficult each are to create.

Windows wouldn't be windows if it didn't run 20 year old binaries with perfect fidelity.