Comment by CharlesColeman
7 years ago
That's true: those things do negatively affect customer experience. However they don't affect customer experience as negatively as the experience of having their software break.
To put this in another context: newer building codes may result in better and safer homes, but it'd be extremely user hostile to force homeowners proactively upgrade their homes to compliance each time a new version is released (at the threat of having their home condemned if they do not). The sensible compromise, in buildings and software, is to allow things to be upgraded over time, as they're modified.
From the OP: > declining concern for the future in comparison to the present
Breaking backwards compatibility has a larger negative impact in the _present_ than the cruft of old APIs and code. But that impact is temporary. However, the negative impacts of cruft can have a larger impact _in total_ over the entire lifetime of the operating system.
> However they don't affect customer experience as negatively as the experience of having their software break.
They affect it far worse, because they affect _every_ user. Having unmaintained/outdated software break only affects the subset of users that want to use that particular software.
You know the saying about how no Excel user uses more than 10% of its features? But everyone uses a different 10%, so ~100% matters? I defy you to find me a business, or probably even a human, more than 2 years old (using computers for more than 2 years) and not using any "legacy" applications. We maintain compatibility for everyone, because everyone uses it.
Who is using these legacy applications and for what? 99% of people use a web browser only these days. As for myself, the closest thing I can think of some in-house legacy crap but even that was 10 years ago. The majority of businesses and humans don't have any of this. What kind of circles do you run in where people are routinely using legacy software?
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