Yeah, I guess the `backwards-compatibility (historically very important at MS)` thing is the root cause for most of the things I violently dislike about the MS platform...
But I get the biz reasoning behind it... dropping backwards-compatibility would mean embracing the fact that software is made to be perpetually re-compiled, modified, re-written. And in an ecosystem embracing these values, closed-source software is automatically at a disadvantage vs. even slightly-worse-but-open-source alternatives.
I find it funny that we care so much about backwards-compatibility in software, but we completely ignore any semblance of it in hardware, where it could actually make a difference w.r.t. climate-change, toxic-chemical pollutions, preventing planned obsolescence etc. :) I mean, if there is any area where actively encouraging "planned obsolescence" in the form of less backwards-compatibility would be good, it would be in software.
Anyway, this is getting offtopic, but just wanted to say that different value systems produce different technologies... even something as boring as a terminal.
But I get the biz reasoning behind it... dropping backwards-compatibility would mean embracing the fact that software is made to be perpetually re-compiled, modified, re-written. And in an ecosystem embracing these values, closed-source software is automatically at a disadvantage vs. even slightly-worse-but-open-source alternatives.
I find it funny that we care so much about backwards-compatibility in software, but we completely ignore any semblance of it in hardware, where it could actually make a difference w.r.t. climate-change, toxic-chemical pollutions, preventing planned obsolescence etc. :) I mean, if there is any area where actively encouraging "planned obsolescence" in the form of less backwards-compatibility would be good, it would be in software.
Anyway, this is getting offtopic, but just wanted to say that different value systems produce different technologies... even something as boring as a terminal.