Comment by jdsully
7 years ago
It seems like focus on developer ergonomics over actual users has been monotonically increasing since I started my career. It may be great for the OS developers that they don't have to care about back compat but it is terrible for the users. Your API may be beautiful but my software no longer works, so the system is useless.
In the case of Linux everyone is now shipping entire userlands with their applications via docker just to workaround compatibility issues. We'd be shipping entire VMs if the kernel wasn't the only one holding the line on compatibility.
Its been a long time now since I saw a programming post talking about how some new paradigm or way of doing things would make life great for the users.
> Your API may be beautiful but my software no longer works, so the system is useless.
If you install from a package, just update. If you built from source, just recompile. If you got a binary, use the support contract you paid for. And if you paid for a binary without a support contract, you got screwed hard, since you can't get bug fixes even if the OS was immutable. But if you did screw yourself, there's vmd that lets you freeze your OS in time.
> since you can't get bug fixes even if the OS was immutable
An immutable OS prevents new bugs from cropping up.
It certainly keeps old security holes in play.